The Mask as Muse: Loïs Mailou Jones Cheryl Finley

Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, Number 29, Fall 2011, pp. 140-151 (Article)

Published by Duke University Press

For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/480705

Access provided by University of Toronto Library (3 Jan 2017 06:16 GMT) The Mask as Muse Loïs Mailou Jones Cheryl Finley

Journal of Contemporary African Art • 29 • Fall 2011 140 • Nka DOI 10.1215/10757163-1496417 © 2012 by Nka Publications Mask making is one of the best outlets “ for growth in design, in color, and in expression.” —Negro History Bulletin, 1940

The mask is of special significance as a record and symbol of life or civilization. In the highly creative mask, we have some of the finest expressions of art. —Negro History Bulletin, 1940

A mask while being “danced” has meaning — only when in active performance or use. The moment it is in motion, it is a living force, when it is in action. —Loïs Mailou Jones, 1964

oïs Mailou Jones enjoyed a lifelong admira- tion for African art and culture. But it was L through the mask that she found herself as an artist, designer, and educator. She was enamored of its spiritual significance, theatrical expression, cultural importance, and emotive possibilities. To be sure, her relationship to the mask was always tied to Africa. The mask would prove an enduring muse for the artist, offering a wellspring of creative, often pioneering ideas for a productive career that spanned more than fifty years. Jones observed, experienced, and contributed to the changing eras in the history of art of the twentieth century, and the mask as her muse tempered her response to art’s stylistic innovations and history’s exciting turns. A 1983 photograph of Jones taken in her studio by the famed Scurlock brothers of Washington, DC, shows the artist in her element, surrounded by images, objects, and pieces of history that fueled the fire of her creative energy. The mask peers out from nearly every corner of the room in animal form, in African ceremonial art, and in framed paintings and reproductions of her own work. A glimpse of her vast library of art books is visible on the right side of the photograph, along with some paintbrushes, pencils, a wooden anatomical model, and a poster for the documentary Fifty Years of My Art, about Jones’s half century of painting. A pho- tograph of her late husband, the Haitian graphic Cheryl Finley

Jones in her Washington, DC, studio, 1983. Papers of Loïs Mailou Jones, Manuscript Division, Moorland-­ Spingarn Research Center, Howard University

Finley Nka • 141 designer Louis Vergniaud Pierre-­Noël, peeks out and choice of bold colors and patterning. But this from behind a sconce on the adjacent wall just was not a recent innovation in her practice. It was below a large cow’s skull. Reminders of her train- present in her work from the very beginning. ing in Paris and subsequent frequent sojourns there include a poster for her critically acclaimed solo The Early Years show at the Galerie Soulanges in Paris in 1966, a Early in her training at the High School of Practical postcard of the tourist icon Sacre-­Coeur in front Arts in Boston (1919–23), Jones was “introduced to of the bookshelf among her paintbrushes, and her Africa through creating the masks with Ripley Stu- 1938 oil painting Le model on the back wall. Behind dios.”5 This apprenticeship enabled the young art- her, a formal black-­and-­white portrait from the ist to apply her budding knowledge of design to the 1950s projects the same energy and joie de vivre performing arts, specifically dance, when she was that Jones does as she smiles proudly for the cam- asked to assist with fashioning masks and costumes era. With three brushes in hand, the artist seems for the Ted Shawn School of Dance.6 Always a thor- eager to paint another boldly colored work filled ough and inquisitive researcher, Jones went back to with African-­inspired masks and repeating design the original sources and studied traditional mask motifs. forms from Africa. Two of Jones’s noted works in acrylic from her The mask as a sculptural form added volume Africa series are prominently displayed in the Scur- and three-­dimensionality to the way that Jones lock photograph: Damballah (1980) is on the easel saw the world, not to mention the way that she behind her, and Symboles d’Afrique (1980) is to her approached portraiture. The charcoal drawing left.1 Both paintings are tightly designed using a lin- Negro Youth (1929) depicts a pensive young man in ear grid in which recurring African masks, icons, profile. The artist’s clever use of light and shading and patterns are systematically placed. In a 1984 accentuates his thoughtful gaze, giving a sculptural interview with artist and critic Evangeline J. Mont- appearance to his chiseled profile. Light washes his gomery, Jones described the direction of her work: face, while his ear and neck are left in shadow, pro- “I am pushing, more or less in the direction of sym- jecting depth, even moodiness. As Faith Ringgold bolism, African symbolism and Haitian symbol- once said, Negro Youth “expressed Loïs’s talent for ism, color and design.”2 In Damballah, named after portraiture and forecast her feeling for the mask, the Haitian Vodun god of creation, a large Afikpo which would become a major force in her art from Ibo mask is clipped by a brightly colored panel of the sixties on.”7 This soft and engaging portrait of Haitian street vendors marching with wares for one of her students at Palmer Memorial Institute sale atop head burdens. To the left, a richly pat- in Sedalia, North Carolina, won honorable mention terned Kakilamba snake in green, blue, black, and at the 1930 Harmon Foundation exhibition in New orange provides a visual reference to Damballah, York. also known as the serpent god. Jones chose to show In another notable early work, The Ascent of Damballah during spiritual possession, as he is Ethiopia (1932), Jones again uses the profile to slithering on the ground and revealing his serpen- depict the central figure of Ethiopia (ancient Africa) tine tongue. Symboles d’Afrique is richly patterned in the bold, richly hued mask of an Egyptian pha- with a mixture of alternating masks, textile designs, raoh in full headdress. Smaller, almost flat figures and Adinkra symbols of West African Ashanti ori- ascending the staircase of a burgeoning “New gin.3 As Jones once explained, “Ofttimes I combine Negro” consciousness, indeed of culture itself — of motifs from various regions in Africa, which result “art, drama and music” — also appear in profile, as in a composition which tends to unify Africa.”4 do two stylized African masks representing the yin Both paintings show Jones’s long-­standing commit- and the yang of theater arts. This much-­discussed ment to working with the mask. They also illustrate work owes a stylistic debt to the New Negro Arts her strong Afrocentric leaning at this stage in her movement muralist Aaron Douglas, known for career, with the repeating use of African symbols his flat “Africanized” profiles and radiating radio

142 • Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art • 29 • Fall 2011 Loïs Mailou Jones, Damballah, 1980. Acrylic, 30 × 35½ in. Courtesy Loïs Mailou Jones Pierre-­Noël Trust waves, as well as the sculptor Meta Warrick Fuller, New York Public Library at 135th Street and Lenox to whose bronze Ethiopia Awakening (1914) Jones’s Avenue (now the Schomburg Center for Research in work pays homage. The Ascent of Ethiopia, which Black Culture), where regular art exhibitions, dra- celebrated the racial pride and artistic flourishing matic performances, and cultural events were held. of the Harlem Renaissance, was shown at the cul- There, among other black intellectuals, she would minating Harmon Foundation exhibition in New meet the renowned bibliophile Arthur Schomburg, York in 1933. with whom she would later work on the Bulletin of In 1934 Jones spent the summer at Columbia Negro History. University, where she studied “masks from non-­ While there, she also worked with Asadata Dafora, Western cultures, including Native American, the celebrated choreographer, drummer, composer, Eskimo, and African ethnic groups,” according to and performance artist from Sierra Leone, who was her biographer, Tritobia Hayes Benjamin.8 Just up stirring up the modern dance world with a ground- the street in Harlem, Aaron Douglas was working breaking performance style that blended traditional on his renowned series of murals Aspects of Negro African dance with drumming and theater.9 Dafora Life (1934) for the Countee Cullen Branch of the sought to present African art and culture in com-

Finley Nka • 143 plex and compelling ways, shunning the abstract Paris exoticism that primitivism and modernism had A 1938 photograph of Jones in her skylit Paris stu- made of traditional African plastic art forms. To dio shows the artist at work before an easel sur- this end, he worked with primarily African-­born rounded by paintings she executed while study- dancers and drummers, many of whom he met at ing at the Académie Julian. Pictured among them the National African Union, a social club, to stage is Les fétiches, displayed on the right. Painted in his novel blend of stimulating “dance drama.” a post-­cubist, post-­primitivist manner, that work Dafora’s most notable work was a dance opera shows five highly stylized African masks in fren- called Kykunkor (Witch Woman), to which Jones zied movement, as if part of a ceremonial masquer- contributed her design expertise. Kykunkor was ade. Dramatically placed before a black backdrop, “the first opera presented in the United States with the masks converge and overlap at different angles, authentic African dances and music, performed in creating a sense of depth and excitement. While in an African tongue by a mainly African-­born cast.”10 Paris, Jones frequented the Musée de l’Homme and Critics called Kykunkor “one of the most exciting other museums, galleries, and marketplaces, where shows in town,” noting that “the songs and dances she studied the substantial collections of African make it so.”11 Jones played an instrumental role in and ethnographic art on display, and later was creating the over-­the-­top ceremonial look of the inspired to paint Les fétiches.15 performance when she designed the dancers’ head- Jones’s masks for Les fétiches reference specific dresses and assisted with the costuming. A series examples from different cultural groups in Africa. of production stills taken by the New York photog­ The striped mask is styled after a Songye Kifwebe rapher Maurice Goldberg reveals the headdresses to mask from central Africa. The large mask in the be elaborate, beaded, and feathered, while the cos- center with raffia pieces is drawn from a Guru Dan tuming included leopard-­skin clothes, zebra-­skin mask from West Africa. The impact of her earlier belts, beaded brassieres, and headdresses.12 Jones’s design work in dance and theater for Shawn and work on the production of Kykunkor intensified her Dafora was synthesized in this powerful painting. interest in classical African art, performance, and On her return from Paris in the fall of 1938, sculpture. Jones resumed her teaching position at Howard The mask, as a moving form — as danced, or, University, where New Negro Arts movement theo- to borrow a phrase from the African art histo- rist Alain Locke urged her to consider themes of rian Robert Farris Thompson, as “African art in African heritage, social injustice, and race pride in motion” — came to life for Jones in the revolution- her painting. But this idea had already taken root ary choreography and percussive drumming of in her mind. As Kinshasha Holman Conwill has Dafora’s “dance drama.”13 The popularity of his remarked on the significance of Jones’s first year particular brand of modern African performance in Paris, “Her realization of French admiration for art rode on the coattails of vaudeville, European African art, and her increased understanding of modernism, jazz, and the New Negro Arts move- African sculpture’s significance in the development ment and paved the way for exquisite new styles in of modern art, boosted her pride in her African modern American dance pioneered by choreogra- heritage.”16 phers Katherine Dunham and Pearl Primus, whose careers Jones would follow.14 Jones’s time in New Pedagogy York that summer shaped the dramatic way that she Nearly five decades of teaching art and design at portrayed the mask in her work, beginning with her Howard University kept Jones on the cutting edge best-­known painting, Les fétiches (1938). and in step with the changing times. As Richard J. Powell observes:

Many artists whose careers extended back to the 1930s and 1940s resurfaced with a renewed sense of racial solidarity and political insurgency dur-

144 • Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art • 29 • Fall 2011 Jones in her Paris studio, 1938. Papers of Loïs Mailou Jones, Manuscript Division, Moorland-­Spingarn Research Center, Howard University

ing the Black Arts Movement. Painters Loïs Mailou Jones believed that teaching the visual arts Jones and John Biggers and sculptor and printmaker and design was an “interdisciplinary” affair well Elizabeth Catlett all aligned themselves with the before that phrase came into popular parlance in younger generation of black artists, creating works the academy. What is more, she was at the forefront that underscored their shared interest in African of designing and implementing black studies cur- design sensibilities, the black figure, and the continu- ricula in the visual arts. In a paper titled “The Cor- ing struggle for civil rights.17 relation of Visual Arts and Design with Music and Drama,” she urged other black educators: “The ris- Not only did Jones continually update her teach- ing importance of Black Studies in American edu- ing methods with new techniques, novel materials, cation offers a challenge to the Black Visual Arts and experimental processes, but she also published and Design, Black Music and Black Drama to serve exhibition reviews, lectured widely, and conducted as a correlated cultural focal point in the planning research abroad.

Finley Nka • 145 of a new curriculum. The three areas should strive The Black Arts Movement was realized by members together in developing an understanding of the Arts of the art faculty at H.U. Prof. James Wells, James and emotional growth in our black students.”18 She Porter and I. We were pioneers in introducing the argued that the “traditional African forms of art, movement among our students, Elizabeth Catlett, which have always incorporated drama, music and Malkia, Delilah Pierce and others. With the assas- sination of Martin Luther King the Black Arts a form of design,” could be harnessed to draw on Movement launched on an intensified momentum, black heritage “in creating projects and ‘happen- which resulted in nationwide presentations of “Black ings’ ” that “not only tend to humanize the envi- Art Shows.” Black artists were determined to estab- ronment, but result in establishing the black man’s lish their identity and to offer to the black commu- identity which is so firmly established in the roots of nity an art which reflected customs, traditions and his ancestors.”19 With this statement she effectively the beauty of black people. Black owned galleries married traditional African plastic and performing throughout the nation were established, galleries arts to one of the popular performance art forms which offered the black artist exposure and a market of the day, “happenings,” to suggest an art practice for his work. As a result of this intensified movement, 21 with the social agenda of the Black Arts movement: black businesses emerged as patrons of the arts. strengthening black identity. Moreover, she hinted that the planned spontaneity that made happenings Jones’s special contribution to the Black Arts move- all the rage in the contemporary art world of the ment was her long-­standing dedication to the art of 1960s and 1970s had been an important element in classical and contemporary Africa and its diaspora, African performance arts all along. particularly in Haiti and the United States. Even By the mid-­1960s Jones began to introduce nat- prior to the mid-­1960s, after her 1953 marriage to ural materials like sand, raffia, beads, and cowrie Louis Vergniaud Pierre-­Noël, Jones frequently lec- shells into some of her multimedia works that also tured, taught, and painted in Haiti, where her pal- incorporated collage. In other paintings, she com- ette changed, quickly soaking up the rays of bright bined the techniques of layering and patterning that sunshine and vibrant presence of African culture recalled the syncopation of the “repeat” pattern in in the marketplace, in the faces of people, and in African textile design. In the classroom during this the spirituality of their religious practices and ritu- period and well into the 1970s, she noted that her als. Paintings produced there were more geometric, design majors often helped dance students make almost cubist, yet abstract, with flat, hard edges and their costumes and, in one case, design “papier hot colors that boldly claimed the proud history of maché masques for an African Folkloric presen- Haiti as the first independent African nation in the tation.”20 Jones also instructed painting students West. Jones found a spiritual home in Haiti, where to paint to music by collaborating with Howard she felt close to Africa. Many of her works painted University’s Department of Jazz, an improvisa- there in the 1960s shared a sense of movement with tional exercise that recalls the signature working African dance, religious processions, and ritual method of African American painter/collage artist practices. As Jones once said, “The art of Africa is 22 Romare Bearden, who listened to jazz music while lived in the daily life of the people of Haiti.” he worked. Symbols, such as the ideographic writing of the ceremonial rites of Vodun, called vévé, and related The Black Arts Movement masking traditions made their way into some of Jones kept a close ear to what was going on around the more abstract paintings that Jones created in her politically, and when the Black Arts movement Haiti, like Vévé Voudou II (1962) and Vévé Voudou began in earnest in the mid-­1960s, using the popu- III (1963). A critic writing in the Washington Post lar slogans “Black Pride,” “Black Is Beautiful,” and observed that “Loïs Mailou Jones is moving from “Black Power,” she and her students and other pro- an impressionist technique to one with strongly fessors at Howard University didn’t hesitate to join accented patterns. . . . ‘Voudou’ is an oil collage in a 23 in. As she stated in her class notes: sophisticated cubist manner.” Jones’s background

146 • Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art • 29 • Fall 2011 in design combined with her innate sensibility for artists . . . and vice versa.”26 On her return to the the texture and weight of fabric produced such United States, Jones shared the riches of her research rhythmic and colorful paintings as Les vendeuses de by organizing exhibitions, lecturing, teaching new tissus (1961) and Street Vendors, Haiti (1978). Both techniques, and making the research materials she works project the perpetual motion of commerce amassed available to her students and others. through the draping of fabric, the movement of In fact, it was the fusion of experiences that Jones vendors, and the balancing of head burdens. Jones’s gained as an artist/educator during the Black Arts first Haitian paintings received rave reviews in her movement and as an artist/researcher in Haiti and 1966 solo exhibition at Galerie Soulanges in Paris, Africa that produced the new and dynamic look of where they were noted for their verve, abundance of her canvases from the 1970s on. But her practical color, and cubist style.24 training as a designer and her belief in the mask’s The artists and intellectuals who led the Black expressive qualities remained foundational to the Arts movement had their eyes set on Africa, and new look she crafted. She drew on these experi- many traveled there to better understand their own ences to write an important position paper, “The black identity through its art, history, culture, and African Influence on Afro-­American Art,” that she literature. Among them were poet and playwright presented at the International Culture and Develop- LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka); poet Maya Angelou; ment Colloquium in Dakar, Senegal, on the occa- artists Delilah Pierce, John Biggers, James A. Porter, sion of the seventieth birthday of President Léo- Tom Feelings, Jeff Donaldson, and David Driskell; pold Senghor in October 1976. In that address she and architect J. Max Bond. Jones would not be left declared, “The influence of African Art permeates out of the exodus to the motherland. the entire contemporary Black art scene. . . . In art, in Seizing the vibrant moment of heightened black music, in literature, Black Americans are returning consciousness, in 1968 Jones designed an extensive to their African roots and utilizing this heritage as three-­part research project called “The Black Visual the basis for their artistic and political expression in Arts” to document contemporary African Diaspora the United States.”27 At that meeting she presented art of Haiti, Africa, and the United States in inter- Senghor with her painting Hommage au Président views, photographs, and slides. Funded by Howard Léopold Sédar Senghor, commissioned by Howard University, she traveled to Haiti in 1968, to eleven University president James Cheek. Notable in that African nations in 1970, and to nine in 1972. She work, tightly designed to include a collage of classi- amassed more than one thousand slides and scores cal African motifs, historical images, and a photo- of hours of interviews with contemporary artists. realist portrait of Senghor, was a small illustration As she explained, “The slides will be used for lec- of a preeminent lieu de mémoire in African Ameri- tures, to show the students, the faculties, the com- can culture: the “door of (no) return” at the Maison munity and anyone in the United States . . . what des Esclaves at Gorée Island in Senegal.28 Without a is really being done by black artists all over the doubt, Jones toured and photographed this impor- world.”25 Jones was especially impressed with the tant site of memory on one of her trips to Senegal. art schools that she visited, including the School of But there is little mention of the historical legacy Fine and Applied Arts in Khartoum, Sudan; the art- of slavery in her writings from this period. Instead, ists of the Oshogbo School in the Yoruba region of she focused on observing contemporary African Nigeria; and the Manufacture Nationale de Tapis- art in its original context; learning new approaches serie in Thiès, Senegal. As an African American cul- to pedagogy in design, painting, and performance tural ambassador in Africa, Jones thrived on artistic art; and studying and documenting classical and exchange and arranged to lecture on the simmer- contemporary examples of African art in muse- ing Black Arts movement and the history of African ums, galleries, art schools, and artists’ studios. She American art in many of the countries she visited. declared, “The major influence of my current work She believed that “there should be an exchange of is still African in origin and I am certain that this works between African artists and Afro-­American trip will renew and enrich my inspiration.”29

Finley Nka • 147 Homage to Oshogbo, 1971. Acrylic, 44½ × 34½ in. Courtesy Loïs Mailou Jones Pierre-­Noël Trust

148 • Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art • 29 • Fall 2011 Africa and the World Jones’s trips to Africa in 1970 and 1972 “provided an opportunity to get a clearer picture of the vari- ous ways in which African art has influenced the works of the Afro-­American artists.” She recalled: “In Africa, I was able to see examples of the ancestral arts in their original settings and in the museums and galleries. . . . It was a rich experience that I will never forget.”30 The subsequent paintings that Jones produced on her return from Africa had a distinct and innovative look. She adopted a new approach to figuration, often incorporating photorealist por- traits with stylized African masks, sculptural icons, and Adinkra symbols. “Each time I made a study of African design, I found the imagery and motifs so inspiring that I’ve had to utilize them in a sort of combination in creating a work.”31 In Homage to Dahomey (1971), Jones drew stylized profiles of repeating Antelope or Chiwara masks along with other design motifs, animals, and the supreme Adinkra symbol pictured in the form of a bull’s-­ eye: Adinkrahene, meaning greatness, charisma, and leadership. Bright colors of orange and gold separated by bold black diagonal lines and bright Ode to Kinshasa, 1972. Mixed media on canvas, 48 × 36 in. blue accents set off the dramatic canvas to recall the National Museum of Women in the Arts, gift of the artist, appliqué tradition of Dahomean wall hangings dat- 1997.105 ing from the seventeenth century. Ubi Girl from Tai Region (1972) shows the head ment.”32 Other artists during this period, including of a young female initiate painted with white and Romare Bearden, Jeff Donaldson, Faith Ringgold, red markings symbolizing protection, superim- Elizabeth Catlett, Ed Love, and Napoleon Hender- posed on the huge profile of a heddle pulley from son, among others, showed a fascination with the Ivory Coast and repeating outlines of masks and African mask. Bearden often incorporated snippets designs from Zaire. Similarly, the acrylic col- of African masks from magazines in his signature lage Moon Masque (1971), exhibited at FESTAC collages of the 1960s and 1970s, such as Village of in Nigeria in 1977, has at its center a white-­faced Yo (1964). Even Ringgold’s soft sculptures, like Faith Kwele mask from Zaire flanked by the profiles of and the Brown Children (1968), referenced the Afri- two young men and textile designs from Ethiopia. can mask in motion. Jones’s use of design elements from different Afri- can regions was no mistake. Rather, this innovative Conclusion choice showed her exercising a form of aesthetic It was the mask, more than anything, that drew interdisciplinarity that united seemingly disparate Jones to create works that envisioned a multiplic- aspects of the composition. Each of these works ity of black experiences. Nowhere was this more hints at Jones’s understanding of the psychological pronounced than in the Africa series, her last sig- meaning of the mask. As she once said, “The mask, nificant body of work, produced in Haiti and Wash- in fact, dominates the Afro-­American interest in ington in the 1970s and 1980s. Around the same African art. This is not surprising since the nature time that the Scurlock studio portrait was taken, of the mask is so well adapted to artistic develop- Jones made a list of twenty-­one works in her Africa

Finley Nka • 149 series. A careful perusal of that list, handwritten on As I mentioned earlier, the image prominently dis- an index card, reveals the depth of her longing for plays Damballah and Symboles d’Afrique; in addi- Africa and how she catalogued her work toward the tion, a small reproduction of her celebrated Moon end of her career. Masque (1971) is visible on the easel behind her. At the top of the chronological list is Les fétiches, Jones looked to Africa as a constant source of based on her study of African masks in Paris galler- inspiration and pride. Historians like Schomburg ies and museums in 1937–38. The paintings, com- and Carter G. Woodson, intellectuals like Alain pleted in 1971 and 1972, respectively, were inspired Locke and W. E. B. Du Bois, dancers like Dafora and by her first two trips to Africa in 1970 and 1972 Primus, and artists like Fuller and Donaldson rein- under the auspices of her Black Visual Arts grant forced her unwavering commitment to Africa, her from Howard University. Works like Congo Dance art, and her heritage. Jones dedicated her life to rais- Mask (1972) and Guli Mask (1972) reference specific ing the visibility of black artists in America, Africa, ceremonial masks, while Magic of Nigeria (1971) is a and Haiti, and she did so despite barriers that she fanciful combination of masks of her own creation. often faced as a woman artist of color. With a career Homage to Oshogbo (1971) and Ode to Kinshasa buttressed by the two major movements in African (1972) employ mixed-­media collage to place flat American art of the twentieth century — the New abstract masks within geometric patterns. Paint- Negro Arts movement and the Black Arts move- ings completed later reference subsequent trips to ment — Jones’s unique black perspective was often Africa in 1976 and 1977, as well as regular sojourns viewed through the mask, a symbol of classical to Haiti and research trips in the Caribbean and African art and a signifier of black identity. Suriname around the same time. Travel to Africa no doubt had a major impact on Jones’s content and method. One can easily observe Cheryl Finley is associate professor of African Amer- how her paintings from the 1970s on bring back ican and African Diaspora art and acting director into play her early direction as a textile designer. of the Visual Studies Program in the Department of Many of these vibrantly colored works rely on History of Art at Cornell University. carefully positioned symbols, masks, animals, or portraits that repeat at a syncopated rate to form Notes polyrhythmic compositions. Others, however, take A longer version of this essay was published in the exhibition catalogue Loïs Mailou Jones: A Life in Vibrant Color, ed. Carla M. on a more conceptual appearance, such as Symboles Hanzal (Charlotte, NC: Mint Museum, 2009). du Suriname (1982). The paintings of her Africa series, with their high gloss and dramatic color 1. The vast majority of the works in Jones’s Africa series were arrangements, challenged popular Western notions painted in Haiti and inspired by her trips to Africa in 1970, 1972, and 1976 or by observations of African cultural and religious of contemporary art, including abstraction, mini- practices in Haiti. A handwritten index card from the artist’s malism, and pop. To be sure, she was influenced by archive lists twenty-­one paintings belonging to her Africa series, Jeff Donaldson’s AfriCOBRA Group, a collective of beginning with Les fétiches (1937) and ending with Surinamia (1982). Loïs Mailou Jones Papers/Moorland Spingarn Research artists founded in 1968 that advocated the use of Center, Howard University, Washington, DC (LMJP/MSRC), box highly polished reflective surfaces and bright bold 215-­18, folder 52. colors that projected the beauty of black people. But 2. Evangeline J. Montgomery, interview with Loïs Mailou Jones, April 4, 1984, 31. LMJP/MSRC, box 215-­19, folder 15. other influences included the popularity of psyche- 3. Adinkra symbols date back to the seventeenth century and delic, metallic, and fluorescent colors of the space can be found printed on cloth, pottery, and walls and in popular age made available to artists through the novelty logos in Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Togo. These symbols were origi- of acrylic paint and polymer paint, which not only nally developed as decorative motifs for fabrics worn in ceremo- 33 nies honoring the dead; the word Adinkra means “good-­bye,” and dried faster but also offered new color possibilities. the symbols printed on mourners’ clothing would have expressed The Scurlock studio portrait, moreover, provides the qualities of the deceased. Each Adinkra symbol has a unique a visual dimension to the handwritten list, becom- name and meaning derived from a proverb, a historical event, a human attitude, an animal behavior, or a variety of plant life, and ing a photographic document of her Africa series. they can assume the forms and shapes of inanimate and man-­ made objects.

150 • Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art • 29 • Fall 2011 4. Speeches on note cards, 1960s–70s. LMJP/MSRC, box 215-­18, 18. Loïs Jones Pierre-­Noël, “The Correlation of Visual Arts and folder 52. Design with Music and Drama,” in Black Arts in Today’s Cur- 5. Tritobia Hayes Benjamin, The Life and Art of Loïs Mailou riculum (Greensboro, NC: Six Institutions’ Consortium, 1971), 9. Jones (San Francisco: Pomegranate Artbooks, 1994), 6. Grace LMJP/MSRC, box 215-­18, folder 36. Ripley, a professor at the Rhode Island School of Design, was a 19. Ibid., 10. renowned New England costume designer. 20. Ibid. 6. Ibid., 6. Ted Shawn (1891–1972) was a pioneering choreog- 21. Class notes on the Black Arts movement, n.d., 11–12. LMJP/ rapher of early American modern dance. In 1914 in Los Angeles, MSRC, illustrated in Thomas C. Battle and Donna M. Wells, he and Ruth St. Denis, his wife and dance partner of many years, Legacy: Treasures of Black History, Moorland-­Spingarn Research established the Denishawn School of Dance, which devised a Center (Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2005), 191. popular technique of music visualization for modern dance and 22. Loïs Mailou Jones, “The African Influence on Afro-­American trained, among others, Martha Graham. Shawn organized Ted Art” (unpublished lecture given at the International Culture and Shawn and His Men Dancers after separating from St. Denis in Development Colloquium on the occasion of President Léopold 1930 and launched Jacob’s Pillow, a popular dance school, theater, Sédar Senghor’s seventieth birthday in Dakar, Senegal, October and retreat in Becket, New York. 1976), 15. LMJP/MSRC, box 215-­18, folder 46. 7. Faith Ringgold, untitled essay honoring Jones’s fifty years in 23. Leslie Judd Portner, Washington Post, 1968. art, September 23, 1985, 3. LMJP/MSRC, box 215-­19, folder 14. 24. Jacques Michel, Le Monde, February 11, 1966. 8. Benjamin, Life and Art, 125. 25. Quoted in Cecilia Oyekola, “Art Is Her Life,” Interlink 9. Ibid. Born in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Asadata Dafora (1890– (Lagos), October–December 1970, 28. LMJP/MSRC, box 215-­19, 1965) emigrated to New York in 1929 after living in Europe for folder 6. nearly twenty years. After receiving critical acclaim for Kykunkor, 26. Ibid. Dafora’s Shogola Oloba group of African performers became the 27. Jones, “African Influence,” 2. African Dance Troupe of the Federal Theatre Project in Harlem 28. See Cheryl Finley, “The Door of (No) Return,” Common-Place in 1935. See www.pbs.org/wnet/freetodance/biographies/dafora 1, no. 4 (2001), www.common-place.org/vol-01/no-04/finley. .html (accessed June 27, 2009). 29. Jones, “African Influence,” 4. 10. Maureen Needham, “Kykunkor, or The Witch Woman: An 30. Ibid., 12. African Opera in America, 1934,” in Dancing Many Drums: 31. Quoted in Mary C. Butler, “American Artist Develops New Excavations in African American Dance, ed. Thomas F. DeFrantz Technique Using African Designs,” Africa Feature, US Informa- (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002), 233. tion Service, February 1973, 2. LMJP/MSRC, box 215-­19, folder 11. “Music: Witch Woman,” Time, June 4, 1934. See www.time 2. Jones’s pencil and ink drawings of Adinkra symbols, African .com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,754201,00.html (accessed June masks, portraits, and performances are found in LMJP/MSRC, 27, 2009). box 215-­15, folder 10. 12. Needham, “Kykunkor,” 242. 32. Jones, “African Influence,” 9. 13. Robert Farris Thompson, African Art in Motion (Berkeley: 33. Kellie Jones, Energy/Experimentation: Black Artists and University of California Press, 1979). Abstraction, 1964–1980 (New York: Studio Museum in Harlem, 14. Like Jones, Katherine Dunham (1909–2006) had a lifelong 2006), 15. interest in Haitian religious practices, specifically the ceremonial arts of Vodun. This interest was manifested in her ethnographic studies of Hispaniola and its people, as well as the anthropological choreography for which she became known. The modern Ameri- can choreography of Pearl Primus (1919–94) promoted African dance in the United States and took up themes of racial oppres- sion, violence, and African American heritage. In her lively paint- ing La Primus Jones showed modern dancers in dramatic poses in the 1940s at the height of their popularity. See plate 112 in Loïs Mailou Jones Peintures, 1937–1951 (Tourcoing: Presses Georges Frères, 1951). 15. Charles H. Rowell, “An Interview with Loïs Mailou Jones,” Callaloo 12, no. 2 (1989): 357–78. See kathmanduk2.wordpress .com/2008/04/18/from-the-­ archives-­ an-­ interview-­ with-­ ­lois-­mailou -­jones (accessed May 3, 2009). 16. Kinshasha Holman Conwill, Explorations in the City of Light: African American Artists in the City of Light (New York: Studio Museum in Harlem, 1996), 47. 17. Richard J. Powell, “Black Arts Movement, Abstraction, and Beyond,” in Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Kwame Anthony Appiah, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), www .artlex.com/ArtLex/a/african_american_7.html (accessed May 31, 2009).

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