“Mine is a quiet exploration—a quest for new meanings in color, texture and design. Even though I sometimes portray scenes of poor and struggling people, it is a great joy to paint.”
Lois Mailou Jones, an African American artist and educator, is a visual embodiment of Black modernity in her 1940 self portrait; an empowered, vibrant depiction of self and of modern Black womanhood. Although many different styles are encompassed by the term, there are certain underlying principles that define modernist art. The Tate Modern defines modernism as:
“A rejection of history and conservative values (such as realistic depiction of subjects); innovation and experimentation with form (the shapes, colours and lines that make up the work) with a tendency to abstraction; and an emphasis on materials, techniques and processes. Modernism has also been driven by various social and political agendas. These were often utopian, and modernism was in general associated with ideal visions of human life and society and a belief in progress.”
Self Portrait places Jones’ understanding of these modernists concepts on display. Self Portrait depicts Jones at work, seated in front of an easel made only slightly visible within the left corner of the canvas. She wears a red collared shirt, dangling gold hoop earrings, a blue overcoat and an unsmiling face. In her hand she holds three paint brushes. In the left corner of the canvas directly below Jones’ signature, a framed painting, presumably Jones’ own work, can be seen peeking in. Jones creates an impactful and distinctly modern portrayal of Black womanhood. Her exploration into and understanding of Blackness, the Black experience and African artistic practice is clear within the piece.
Self Portrait is an image of a woman at work. It is in this fact that it finds itself a distinctly modern portrayal in terms of thought and of representation of the modern woman. It had been generally accepted that the performing arts were the more appropriate place for a woman to take part in the arts and culture sphere of the Harlem Renaissance. For Jones to place herself within her self portrait as a painter at work, seated before an easel and with brushes in hand, is a distinctly modern view of womanhood in relation to the arts. In Harlem as is true for many of the cultural capital cities around the world, women artists, writers, and hostesses helped to define the Renaissance.
The Black women of the Harlem Renaissance were actively serving in major roles in creating, supporting, and promoting African-American arts. Even those women of this period who were not directly involved in the creation of these new artistic and literary contributions were key in their advancement. These women were especially important in the creation of centers of the New Negro Movement outside of New York City, because women were more likely than their male counterparts to be tied to home and family by obligation, societal norms, or economic dependence, and so were often unable to find their way to be physically present within the goings on of Harlem. The number of black women writers, essayists, poets, novelists, and playwrights who were seeing their work being published at a large scale (usually in journals) during this time was unprecedented, but still these numbers remained noticeably less than those of their male counterparts during the same period. Therefore, for Jones to make the decision for her self portrait to be an image of herself fully immersed within her art and in position of the tools of her craft, she is aligning her image of self with a modern view of womanhood and the things a woman can be capable of. Agency over your own narrative is an important topic discussed in Black feminism and womanism. Black women being involved in the creation of these works of art (whether directly or indirectly) that depict their own features and the features of the Black experience they live within is directly connected to the building and maintaining of this agency.
Lois Mailou Jones’ Self Portrait contributes to a conversation larger than that of self depiction or acceptance of self. This piece places Jones in conversation with other modern thought leaders of the era. It exists directly in line with the ideas of those like Aaron Douglass (widely acknowledged as one of the most accomplished and influential visual artists of the Harlem Renaissance) who, in 1927, created a cover for The Crisis magazine; an image of a Black woman holding the globe above her head titled The Burden of Black Womanhood. This venturing into new ideas regarding the role of Black women, new expressions and appreciations of a culture tossed aside by white society, is a result of modern thinking. It is its participation in this larger conversation surrounding the newly reformed definitions of womanhood and of Blackness during the Harlem Renaissance that makes Self Portrait a truly modern depiction of Black womanhood.