African American Performer Josephine Baker Bal Nègre Poster After Caron, 1927 Event

Josephine Baker

Broadside

[African American] [Music] [Art and Design] Baker, Josephine. Bal Nègre poster, 1927 documents the performance culture surrounding Josephine Baker in interwar Paris and provides visual evidence of her role in shaping transatlantic Black modernism during the Jazz Age. The poster advertises a February 12, 1927 event at the Bal Nègre, a Parisian nightclub associated with jazz, Caribbean music, and avant garde artistic circles, situating Baker within a network of performance spaces that brought African diasporic music and dance into European cultural life. The image supports research into the circulation of Black performers in Europe, the visual language of Art Deco design, and the complex dynamics of representation and exoticism applied to African American artists abroad.

Baker, Josephine. Bal Nègre. Paris: M. Ducelier, 1927. Color lithograph poster after a design by Caron, likely printed in the 1950s. Measures approximately 25 x 35 inches. The composition presents Baker mid dance in a stylized form, wearing a banana skirt associated with her performances in the Revue Nègre, rendered with elongated limbs and geometric abstraction characteristic of Art Deco visual culture. The poster announces a performance held at 10 pm and incorporates bold graphic elements consistent with commercial poster design of the period.

The poster situates Baker within the broader context of Paris as a center for Black artistic and musical expression in the interwar years, where performers from the United States and the Caribbean found audiences receptive to jazz and modern dance. Venues such as the Bal Nègre functioned as meeting points for musicians, dancers, and artists engaged in experimental forms, while also producing imagery that framed Black performance through stylized and often exoticized visual conventions. Baker’s prominence in this environment contributed to the international visibility of African American performers and to the development of modernist aesthetics linked to music and movement. Light handling wear with minor edge wear; colors remain strong and presentation intact. Overall very good condition. A visually significant example of Josephine Baker’s representation within early twentieth century performance culture and graphic design.

Item #21728

Price: $780.00