Jacob Lawrence moved to New York City’s Harlem neighborhood at 13 years old and was immediately taken with the area’s dynamism and sense of artistic community. As a young artist, he soaked in Harlem’s creative diversity, visiting jazz lounges, attending vaudeville shows and riveting theatrical productions at institutions including the storied Apollo Theater on 125th Street. It was this community that influenced his experimental “Performance” body of work from the early 1950s. Channeling the color and drama of show business, the Performance series was Lawrence’s first to not follow a distinct narrative chronology. The present work, Makeup, takes us backstage, depicting actors transforming into their characters through elaborate, Harlequin-esque stage makeup. These masked faces resemble the highly stylized masks worn by the Mbunda people of Africa (present day south-east Angola), the likes of which Lawrence would have seen echoed in pieces by contemporary Harlem artists. With its flattened and fragmented composition, Makeup is an excellent example of Lawrence’s signature Dynamic Cubist style. The work is among Lawrence’s most abstract, yet its subject of role playing directly ties to the post-war discourse on individuality and authenticity – subjects that continue to resonate today.