Mule Bone
Artist
James McMullan
United States, born 1934
Date1991
Dimensions45 x 59 1/2 in. (114.3 x 151.1 cm)
ClassificationsPoster
Credit LinePoster House Permanent Collection
Object numberPH.7673
DescriptionMule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life, a play with music about African American life in the rural Florida of the 1920s, was written in 1930 by two of the great authors of the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes. However, due to a falling out between these two friends, it did not get its world premiere until 1991, when it was staged by Lincoln Center at the Barrymore Theatre on Broadway in the production advertised here. The play was adapted from Hurston’s story “The Bone of Contention” about her hometown in Eatonville, Florida, and was the first play to represent African Americans in a vivid, authentic, and non-stereotypical manner. James McMullen, who designed the poster, is an illustrator best known for his many posters for Lincoln Center, where he was appointed Principal Poster Artist in 1986. His painterly design here suggests the style of certain paintings of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and ‘30s and also points to his general focus on the expressiveness of the body and gestures of each individual actor.On View
Not on view
