Paul Colin

(Fr. 1892-1985)

Revue Negre, a Preliminary Study for the Poster

Oil on canvas, framed

Indistinct inscription on stretcher verso

25" x 17 9/16" actual, 29 3/4" x 22 3/8" framed

In the summer of 1925, American performer Josephine Baker arrived in Paris. Originally from St. Louis, MO, she had already risen to some fame in the United States for her roles in minstrel shows which parodied the lives of Black Americans throughout the country’s history. She had begun her career as a performer at the age of 13, and became distinguished among other female dancers for the comedic nature of her performances. In clownish minstrel makeup, her early performances could be read as a mockery of her fellow performers or as a subversion of the over-sexualized roles other Black women were expected to play. For Baker herself, a career in show business was a way of gaining social and financial power that allowed her to avoid the manual labor jobs that were available to Black women in the United States at the turn of the century. She arrived in Paris at age 18, and by the age of 24 she was a millionaire: a feat nearly impossible for a Black woman during her time period.

In the years between World War I and World War II, simultaneous with the Harlem Renaissance in the U.S., the art scene in Paris had taken a fervor for Black culture in a phenomenon that has now come to be known as “nègrophilie”. From the extensive visual references to African art and artifacts in Cubism and Surrealism to the import of American jazz in the nightclubs of Montmartre, interwar Parisians were fascinated with what they deemed the cultural “other”. In the wake of World War I, the lofty idealism of Post-Enlightenment philosophy could not justify the 1.38 million French deaths and rampant destruction throughout Europe. Parisian artists and intellectuals were searching for a space in which to explore the idea of a more primitive form of humanity, free from political strife and bending toward pleasure and instinct. 

Shortly after her arrival in Paris’s Montmartre neighborhood (known during this period as Harlem-sur-Seine), Baker became the star of La Revue Nègre, a musical performance that depicted scenes of Black American life. The setting of the show was a fantastical, homogenized locale that conflated a contemporary Harlem, New York with a mythological and primitivized “Africa”. Artist and graphic designer Paul Colin was commissioned to design a poster advertising the spectacle. He was immediately captivated by Baker, who became the focal point of some of the prolific artist’s most famous works.

The two oil paintings found here are originals for the posters advertising La Revue Nègre and Le Bal Nègre (a bar and nightclub where Baker and other Black artists performed). They come from the Harlem Renaissance collection of dancer Doug Crutchfield, who worked as a performer and instructor in Paris. Crutchfield purchased both paintings directly from the artist.