The Mask as Muse: Loïs Mailou Jones

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

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

Loïs Mailou Jones enjoyed a lifelong admiration for African art and culture. But it was 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 photograph of her late husband, the Haitian graphic designer Louis Vergniaud Pierre-Noël, peeks out from behind a sconce on the adjacent wall just below a large cow’s skull. Reminders of her training in Paris and subsequent frequent sojourns there include a poster for her critically acclaimed solo show at the Galerie Soulanges in Paris in 1966, a postcard of the tourist icon Sacre-Coeur in front of the bookshelf among her paintbrushes, and her 1938 oil painting Le model on the back wall. Behind her, a formal black-and-white portrait from the 1950s projects the same energy and joie de vivre that Jones does as she smiles proudly for the camera. With three brushes in hand, the artist seems eager to paint another boldly colored work filled with African-inspired masks and repeating design motifs.

Two of Jones’s noted works in acrylic from her Africa series are prominently displayed in the Scurlock photograph: Damballah (1980) is on the easel behind her, and Symboles d’Afrique (1980) is to her left.¹ Both paintings are tightly designed using a linear grid in which recurring African masks, icons, and patterns are systematically placed. In a 1984 interview with artist and critic Evangeline J. Montgomery, Jones described the direction of her work: “I am pushing, more or less in the direction of symbolism, African symbolism and Haitian symbolism, color and design.”² In Damballah, named after the Haitian Vodun god of creation, a large Afikpo Ibo mask is clipped by a brightly colored panel of Haitian street vendors marching with wares for sale atop head burdens. To the left, a richly patterned Kakilamba snake in green, blue, black, and orange provides a visual reference to Damballah, also known as the serpent god. Jones chose to show Damballah during spiritual possession, as he is slithering on the ground and revealing his serpentine tongue. Symboles d’Afrique is richly patterned with a mixture of alternating masks, textile designs, and Adinkra symbols of...