Lloyd Toone
African art is known for its stylized forms and its eclectic and inventive use of materials, qualities that were recognized by such early European modernists as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Amedeo Modigliani. After Picasso incorporated African-mask-like visages in his groundbreaking Les Desmoiselles d’Avignon, he moved on to collage and assemblage—art forms even more indebted to tribal art. In this country, when African-Americans began to assert themselves, they embraced Picasso’s breakthroughs and forged art that was deeply rooted in Africa. Harlem-based Lloyd Toone (born 1941) has synthesized this artistic heritage with his familiarity with fashion and cosmetology.
Toone was born in Chase City, Virginia, and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from Hampton University, a historically black institution committed to multiculturalism located in coastal Virginia. Later he earned a Master of Science in Education from Manhattan College, and for thirty years he taught middle school art in a residential treatment center in Dobbs Ferry, New York, for children with emotional and learning disabilities. Toone has traveled extensively, and these trips have fueled him as an artist and teacher: “Actually, the mixed media works derive from the regular sabbaticals to countries like Egypt, southeast Asia, and the Caribbean, during my teaching career to keep the inspiration flowing. My career as a teacher benefited greatly from my life experiences as a world traveler. I think it is important to teach from experience rather than just from a planned book of lessons.” [1]
The other great influence on the artist has been his wife, Peggy Dillard-Toone, a noted fashion designer and model whose face has graced the covers of Vogue, Ebony, and Cosmopolitan magazines. For ten years she owned and operated Turning Heads Salon, a premier establishment for African-American hair and skin care. In 1980, the Toones purchased a Victorian brownstone on West 121st Street and were pioneers in efforts to gentrify that area of Harlem. Their home doubles as a gallery for his art and for work by Southern outsider artists.
Like many Harlem artists before him, Toone responded to his ancestral roots; through his travels, he became aware of how indigenous cultures used discarded objects and gave them new meaning while still retaining the spirit of their original function. He has created a distinctive aesthetic that employs cast-off materials, such as bottles, wood fragments, and aluminum cans, but his favorite resource is the shoe repair shop where he gathers shoe leather, soles, heels, and small nails. His three-dimensional wall sculptures often resemble African tribal masks. Despite—or perhaps because of—the inspiration he derives from African art, Toone has been overlooked by The Studio Museum in Harlem, an omission which, he believes, results from the organization’s interest in “post-black” art. “Art mirrors the society in which it exists. Black artists still find it hard to be accepted in the mainstream. Maybe it’s because we remind people too much of a painful past.” [2]
Notes:
[1] Toone e-mail message to Mila Rossi, September 29, 2003, archives, Reynolda House Museum of American Art.
[2] Deborah Solomon, “The Downtowning of Uptown,” New York Times, August 19, 2001, and Toone quoted in “Harlem’s Second Coming,” BBC News, December 23, 2000, photocopy, archives, Reynolda House Museum of American Art.
