Rebecca VanDiver on Lois Mailou Jones
In episode\xa052 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the\xa0renowned art historian Rebecca K. VanDiver\xa0on the trailblazing and legendary LOIS MAILOU JONES (1905\u20131998) !!!!\n\n[This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.co.uk | use the code TGWA at checkout for 10% off!]\n\nBorn in Boston, had her first exhibition aged 17, and found herself in the midst of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s, Lois Mailou Jones had an EXTENSIVE artistic career that spanned almost an entire century, and an oeuvre that ranged from traditional portraits, Haitian landscapes, to African-themed abstraction. \n\nBorn to accomplished, upper-middle-class, professional parents in Boston, Jones spent her early years surrounded by the cultural elite on the island of Martha\u2019s Vineyard, including sculptor Meta Warwick Fuller, a mentor to the young Jones and encouraging her to study in Paris.\n\nContinuously awarded scholarships to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts associated with the Boston Museum, the always highly determined Jones originally pursued textiles (however soon retracted after finding out that designers\u2019 names weren\u2019t recognised in the same as painters). An educator for nearly 50 years, she first got a job at PalmerMemorial School (which she would drive down to in her sports car, as well as coach basketball!), and in 1930 was personally recruited to teach at Howard University, the epicentre of Black intellectualism (her students included Elizabeth Catlett, and painter Alma Thomas was her neighbour in DC!).\n\nSpending many summers of the 1920s immersed in the Harlem Renaissance, between 1937\u20138 Jones ventured to Paris on sabbatical, where she adopted an impressionist-like style, painting \u2018en plein air\u2019. Like so many of her contemporaries of the Harlem Renaissance, Jones felt welcome as an artist in Paris. Developing her negotiations with African themes in her work, such as Les Fetiches, 1937, a small painting of African masks, it was on her return to America that she was encouraged by Harlem Renaissance gatekeeper, Alain Locke, to further embrace the everyday life of African American people.\n\nHonoured by numerous presidents, granted a Lois Mailou Jones Day AND Avenue in America, it wasn't until her elderly age that she took America by storm. And WOW. Has she had an impact on American art. ENJOY!!!!\n\nRebecca K Vandiver is a RENOWNED scholar, and has just written a book on LMJ! See here:\xa0https://www.waterstones.com/book/designing-a-new-tradition/rebecca-vandiver//9780271086040\n\nFURTHER LINKS!\nhttps://www.rebeccavandiver.com/\nhttps://americanart.si.edu/artist/lo%C3%AFs-mailou-jones-5658\nhttps://nmwa.org/art/artists/lois-mailou-jones/\nhttps://hyperallergic.com/600201/lois-mailou-jones-an-artist-and-educator-who-made-history/\n\nFollow us:\nKaty Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel\nSound editing by Laura Hendry\xa0\nArtwork by @thisisaliceskinner\nMusic by Ben Wetherfield\n\nhttps://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/