Jennifer Spires

The Harlem Renaissance was a time of great significance for African Americans after World War I. This significant period in U.S. history boosted Black pride, self-determination, and social consciousness. The Harlem Renaissance showcased creative excellence in areas such as art, music, and literature. In art, the Harlem Renaissance introduced us to many artists who took control of how Black people are represented. This essay will examine visual artist Lois Mailou Jones. Specifically, it will discuss her life, travels, role in the Harlem Renaissance, and legacy. Key works analyzed will include Les Fetiches and Moon Masque. The essay will explore the themes of resistance and empowerment.

Lois Mailou Jones was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on November 3, 1905, to middle-class parents Thomas Freeland and Carolyn Jones. Both of her parents had successful careers; her mother, Carolyn, was a cosmetologist and a hat designer, and her father, Thomas, was a superintendent turned lawyer who was also the first Black graduate at the age of forty from Suffolk Law School. At a young age, Lois' parents, after seeing how creative their daughter was, encouraged her to pursue her talents in art and supported her artistic career. In a 1989 interview, she recalled that she was always drawing: "I loved color. My mother and father, realizing that I had talent, gave me an excellent supply of crayons and pencils and paper—and encouraged me."[1] With this, she started to draw and paint at a young age, and it was around this time that she started venturing into watercolor. It is safe to assume that if it were not for Jones' parents encouraging her to follow her dreams, she may not have pursued her eventual career as a visual artist. While progressing in her artistic career, Lois and her family holidayed at Martha's Vineyard, where they became acquainted with sculptor Meta Warrick Fuller, composer Harry T. Burleigh, and novelist Dorothy West, all of whom would influence Jones significantly.[2]

Supported by her parents, Lois was enrolled in schools that could help her progress in her visual arts journey, such as the High School of Practical Arts. During her time there, she won a scholarship to the Boston Museum Vocational Drawing Class, which she attended every day after school to take drawing classes, and this would last throughout her tenure at her school. Also, around this time, she met designer Grace Riley, a professor at the Rhode Island School of Design, who offered Jones a job working at her studio. There she designed costumes for the Denishawn School of Dance and one of the branches of the Braggiotti School. She would spend her time after school and on Saturdays at Riley's studio, which was located in Boylston, designing costumes and masks, which would later play a massive part in her work. She says of this experience: "I found that African masks gave me my best opportunity for studying the mask as a form, and my interest in the mask began very early in my career."[3]

Photograph of Lois Mailou Jones, c. 1937 or 1938

After graduating from high school, Jones enrolled in the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, supported by a scholarship she had won during her time in the Vocational Drawing Class. While attending the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, she majored in design, which led to a graduate scholarship to the Boston Designers Art School. This scholarship would lead Jones to her initial career as a designer, and she learned to make pattern designs and designs for cretonnes that would eventually be sold in the US. However, after realizing she would never get credit for her designs as an artist, she turned to a career in painting. She needed to support herself to make this change happen, but it turned out that things would be challenging for her in the beginning.[4] She recalls asking the Boston Museum School for the Arts director if there were job opportunities for her, to which he responded by asking if she had thought about going down South to help her people. She later recalled: "That was a shock to me, because here I was a young Boston lady exposed to Radcliffe and Simmons and Harvard and Tufts and all of the big schools. And here I was being told to go down South and help my people."[5] After being rejected, Lois eventually traveled to North Carolina, where she was appointed to teach and build up the art department at the Palmer Memorial Institute from 1928 to 1930. She was later recruited to teach design and watercolor at Howard University until the late 1970s, where she retired in 1977 after forty-seven years.

Despite living in Boston when it began, Lois made her presence known during the Harlem Renaissance through her art. In 1932, Jones, during her early years at Howard, created the narrative painting Ascent of Ethiopia. One of her most celebrated paintings, Ascent of Ethiopia is a narrative painting that focuses on humanity’s will to triumph and eventually prevail against evil. The painting received a very positive reception, giving Lois widespread recognition.

Lois Mailou Jones, The Ascent of Ethiopia, 1932.
Oil on canvas. 23 1/2 × 17 1/4 in.

In 1937, five years after creating Ascent of Ethiopia, Jones was given a General Education Board Fellowship to study at the Académie Julian in Paris, France, taking a year sabbatical from Howard University.[6] When asked why she traveled to Paris, Jones replied with the word "Freedom.” She continued: "To be shackle free. That's the thing that released you from all the pressure and stagnation which we suffered in this country." During her time in Paris, Jones created thirty watercolors and forty paintings (two of the latter would be accepted in art exhibitions), was invited to show her work often, met her lifelong friend Céline Marie Tabary (who would help Lois by submitting her work in person to Washington, D.C.'s segregated Corcoran Gallery), and continued her research on masks, particularly African masks. However, Paris was not the only country to which she would travel. In the 1950s, Jones traveled to Haiti with her husband, graphic artist Louis Vergniaud Pierre-Noël, who introduced her to Haiti's culture. Upon arrival, she encountered two different cultures: the French, and the Creole. It was among the latter that Jones studied the Haitian Creole style after being taught how the Creole population developed their own creative methods. This experience and the eventual visits to eleven African countries would greatly impact her artistic trajectory.

Throughout her life and travels, Jones’ painting style constantly evolved. For instance, her ideals were omnipresent in Boston during the Harlem Renaissance. While overseas, specifically in Paris and Africa, she produced an essential change in her style, and discovered new cultures from a whole new perspective.[7] One of her paintings, Les Fetishes, created in 1938, represents her constant evolution as an artist. Interestingly, during the early sketches of the painting in mention, Jones was criticized for the use of African themes in her work by her French professors. She defiantly defended her stance by responding, “if masters like Matisse and Picasso could use them,” she said, ​“don’t you think I should?”[8] In this painting, there are five African masks with a red sculptural figure in front of the masks hovering in an ambiguous space. This painting shows Jones’ effort to draw strength, confidence, and protection from her heritage to combat prejudice and racism. Furthermore, the painting also identifies the diversity of different cultures from across Africa. African masks would be frequently featured throughout her paintings, and one of those unique paintings is entitled Moon Masque. Created in 1971, it is a paper-mâché replica of a heart-shaped Kwele mask (representing heritage and tradition) from the Democratic Republic of the Congo surrounded by masklike profiles and designs drawn from Ethiopian textiles, which resemble somber individuals. This painting indicates that the mask is weeping for fellow Africans due to the situations that they are in.[9]

After she retired from teaching at Howard University in 1977, Lois continued to exhibit her work in the United States and internationally, painting and traveling. During this time, she created more paintings, such as 1982's Suriname, 1983's Initiation, Liberia, and 1988's We Shall Overcome. As usual, African masks and themes were a featured part of her work, but We Shall Overcome tells another story. The painting shows prominent African American pop culture and civil rights figures at the forefront, overshadowing evils, such as racism and drugs, in the background.[10] This painting communicates that despite how many challenges African Americans face, they will always overcome and rise from the ashes.

In 1980, Lois Mailou Jones finally received the recognition she rightfully deserved by being honored by President Jimmy Carter for her outstanding arts achievements, and she also received many honorary degrees from colleges and universities. Also, on July 29, 1984, she was honored in Washington, D.C., when Lois Mailou Jones Day was declared a holiday. She would keep lecturing and painting well into the 1990s until she passed away in her home in D.C. on June 9, 1998, at the age of 92, and was buried in Martha's Vineyard, which was one of the very places where her talents were originally noticed.

Lois Mailou Jones has been a role model for African American artists, most notably her students from Howard University. From late 1998 through early 1999, her students, the Mint Museum of Art, and the Afro-American Cultural Center of Charlotte jointly hosted an art exhibition celebrating her artistic and teaching legacy.[11] She was also a champion of the international artistic achievement of African American art, being one of the few artists during her time to use themes from other countries around the world. According to Jones, her greatest contribution to the art world was proving how talented Black artists can be.[12] Furthermore, she wanted to make herself known as a painter, simply refusing labels and wanting to create artwork that reflected her pride in her African roots and her ancestors.

Lois Mailou Jones is indeed one of several significant figures of the Harlem Renaissance. She was a teacher, artist, and trailblazer, especially for women artists. Talented at a young age, she earned awards, exhibited her work worldwide, taught for over forty years, and traveled widely. She even had a party thrown for her on her 89th birthday at the Corcoran Gallery, where she finally received a formal apology for the museum's past racist exclusion of her work. Jones did what she loved until the end: painting and traveling. In her own words, there was no end to her creative expression.

[1] Rowell, Charles H. “An Interview with Lois Mailou Jones.” Callaloo, no. 39 (1989): 357–78. https://doi.org/10.2307/2931576.

[2] Laurianne Simonin, “Lois Mailou Jones: Inimitable Fusion of Cultures,” Barnebys.com, July 7, 2020, https://www.barnebys.com/blog/lois-mailou-jones-inimitable-fusion-of-cultures.

[3] CHR. “LOÏS MAILOU JONES: (1905–1998).” Callaloo 39, no. 5 (2016): 1017–1101. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26776262.

[4] Rowell, Charles H. “An Interview with Lois Mailou Jones.” Callaloo, no. 39 (1989): 357–78. https://doi.org/10.2307/2931576.

[5] CHR. “LOÏS MAILOU JONES: (1905–1998).” Callaloo 39, no. 5 (2016): 1017–1101. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26776262.

[6]CHR. “LOÏS MAILOU JONES: (1905–1998).” Callaloo 39, no. 5 (2016): 1017–1101. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26776262.

[7] Laura Bothe, “Between Harlem and Paris – the Early Work of Loïs Mailou Jones,” Artverlaine, March 4, 2022, https://artverlaine.com/2021/12/19/between-harlem-and-paris-the-early-work-of-lois-mailou-jones/.

[8] Smithsonian American Art Museum. “Les Fétiches,” n.d. https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/les-fetiches-31947.

[9] Smithsonian American Art Museum, “Moon Masque,” n.d., https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/moon-masque-76334.

[10] Smithsonian American Art Museum, “We Shall Overcome,” n.d., https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/we-shall-overcome-76337.

[11] “Lois Mailou Jones and Her Former Students: An American Legacy,” n.d. https://tfaoi.org/newsmu/nmus74c.htm.

[12] Laurianne Simonin, “Lois Mailou Jones: Inimitable Fusion of Cultures,” Barnebys.com, July 7, 2020, https://www.barnebys.com/blog/lois-mailou-jones-inimitable-fusion-of-cultures.

References

“Lois Mailou Jones and Her Former Students: An American Legacy,” n.d. https://www.tfaoi.org/newsmu/nmus74c.htm

Bothe, Laura. “Between Harlem and Paris – the Early Work of Loïs Mailou Jones.” Artverlaine, March 4, 2022. https://artverlaine.com/2021/12/19/between-harlem-and-paris-the-early-work-of-lois-mailou-jones/.

Brown, Hillary. “Lois Mailou Jones and the Art of Perseverance.” Frederic Magazine, February 4, 2022. https://fredericmagazine.com/2021/02/lois-mailou-jones-artist-textile-design/.

Rowell, Charles H. “An Interview with Lois Mailou Jones.” Callaloo, no. 39 (1989): 357–78. https://doi.org/10.2307/2931576.

CHR. “LOÏS MAILOU JONES: (1905–1998).” Callaloo 39, no. 5 (2016): 1017–1101. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26776262.

Sartle. “Les Fétiches [Loïs Mailou Jones],” November 1, 2022. https://www.sartle.com/artwork/les-fetiches-lois-mailou-jones.

Simonin, Laurianne. “Lois Mailou Jones: Inimitable Fusion of Cultures.” Barnebys.com, July 7, 2020. https://www.barnebys.com/blog/lois-mailou-jones-inimitable-fusion-of-cultures.

Smithsonian American Art Museum, “Loïs Mailou Jones,” n.d., https://americanart.si.edu/artist/lo%C3%AFs-mailou-jones-5658.

To cite: Spires, Jennifer. “The Triumph of Lois Mailou Jones.” Journal of Art & Theatre vol 2.1, (2023): 9-14.