Black Light Series #12: Party Time, 1969

“I wanted to show the essence of black people in any place that I could. The dancing, the party time. These people are dancing. When you’re on the floor dancing, there’s no up and down anymore, and I wanted to reflect it in that painting.”~Faith Ringgold

Oil on canvas

59 3/4 x 84 in.

US America Black and Party Time are two large-scale paintings and Ringgold’s final works in her Black Light series.
Here, she combines several aspects of painting and composition developed throughout the Black Light series such as the variations of dark color tones within select palettes, the rendering of figures and faces in abstracted planes of color, and the composition of the paintings into geometrical patterns. US America Black shows eight portraits, seven of individuals and one of a couple, within the eight sections Faith Ringgold had based on the geometrical Kuba pattern.

Party Time shows four Black figures, dressed in party attire and gold jewelry dancing. The four figures are in front of red, light blue, ochre, and dark blue backgrounds, oriented with their heads towards the center of the painting, dynamically occupying the space of the canvas and beyond. In this painting in particular, Ringgold achieved what she called a “poly-rhythmical space,” where action is happening on the entire canvas, not only in one small area of focus.

Apart from her 1971 painting For the Women’s House these were the last large-scale paintings completed by Faith Ringgold.