by Joseph Lofton | January 25, 2012
Parallel Spirits

For years at the Art Students League I studied African and Mexican Art, in a continual search to identify the resemblance between both.

I decided that getting to know someone requires to spend some time living with them, so during my sojourn to Mexico I painted ornamental Mexican and African designs to show that the two of them could coexist harmoniously on the same plane.

After 25 years in Mexico I realized that for certain groups in Mexican society, synthesizing African and Mexican art could have a potentially incendiary significance. However, while looking at a pair of sculptures I possess, I saw something that had eluded me for 40 years.

Eureka! I had found it, the spiritual bond between African and Indian art, considering that the great Mexican art was created by Indian civilizations.

As a result of this discovery I painted Parallel Spirits. The female is Ashanti and the male is Aztec. The Ashanti concept of ideal beauty is long necks, high forehead and a small mouth. This reminds me of an exhibit I had some years ago where a lady, while looking at my paintings, told me: “I just love your work, especially those long necks… you are surely influenced by Modigliani.” My answer was: “No ma’am, I was influenced by the Africans and so was Modigliani.” However, the spiritual content of both expressions gives significance to the form of African and Indian in my painting, Parallel Spirits.

This work includes frame and certificate of authenticity.