JOSEPHINE BAKER ENAMEL PIN

 

Le Tumulte Noir (1927), © 2022 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

 

Academy Museum Exclusive
Created to celebrate the Regeneration exhibit at the Academy Museum.

 

After Josephine Baker’s first performance at Paris’s “La revue nègre,” she quickly became the major act at venues such as the cabaret music hall Folies Bergère, where she performed in her legendary banana skirt. Her fame was predominantly built on colonialist fantasies of non-Western cultures, and she created an exoticized image of herself through exaggerated dance moves, costumes, and characters. This hand-colored lithograph is part of a series drawn by caricaturist Paul Colin that pays homage to Baker's talent and charisma.

 

Josephine Baker (1906–1975) moved to Paris at age 19 to perform in La Revue nègre at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, and quickly became the main attraction. She played lead roles in four French feature films between 1927 and 1945; she worked for the French Resistance in World War II; and she dedicated her life to human rights causes. Baker was the first Black woman to receive a state funeral in France, and was posthumously inducted into the Panthéon, the nation’s mausoleum of heroes, in 2021.