“In the 1960s, many artists thought it was cool to not sign their paintings. I made a painting doing just the opposite.”~Faith Ringgold
Oil on canvas
30 x 30 in.
Faith Ringgold’s 1969 Ego Painting is a square medium-sized oil on canvas painting. Just like its predecessor in the series, Love Black Life, the square is divided into eight right-angled triangles in flat shades of red, dark blue, grays, and dark brown. The painting integrates image and text: Each of the triangles holds words in tapering capital letters in Ringgold’s own typography spelling the words “America,” “Black,” and “Ringgold.” While the words “America” and “Black” appear twice each, the artist’s own last name, “Ringgold,” appears four times.
Contextualized by the name of the color black as well as the geographical term America, broadly associated with the United States of America, Ringgold decided to assert herself as an artist by making her own last name predominant in this painting. The artist has made herself and two attributes she identifies with the subject of this painting – explaining its title, Ego Painting. In addition, she is making a statement on the practice of painters signing a painting with their name, a custom that only developed in European art during the Renaissance (15th century), when artists wanted to be acknowledged for their individual creativity. They began signing their names visibly and proudly on the front of their paintings, often on top of the images in the bottom right corner. Later, especially by the middle of the 20th century, artists sometimes signed paintings on the back of the canvas, but still signed them. An artist’s signature also became a way of declaring that a painting was finished and that it was original, which is why signatures are usually in distinct cursive writing that is hard to forge. Hence, it can also serve to establish a painting’s value associated with its creator.
Faith Ringgold had described that she had often been told by artist peers in the 1960s that it was old-fashioned and self-centered to visibly sign a painting as an artist: Ringgold decided that she would not put a traditional cursive signature on the front of the painting, but instead would make herself the subject of the painting repeating her name four times, in large letters, proudly asserting herself.