Bessie Smith

Daniel Maloney was a New York-based sculptor who created realistic portrait sculptures from his studio in on the top floor of cultural impresario Lincoln Kirstein’s house. Maloney’s group of friends included many other notable LGBTQ+ artists and authors such as Paul Cadmus, George Tooker, W.H. Auden, William Christopher, and Jared French.

The legendary singer Bessie Smith (1894–1937), “The Empress of the Blues”, was known for her emotional power in songs about hardship and loss. Maloney may have chosen Smith as his subject in part because, just four years prior to this sculpture’s creation, singer Janis Joplin and Smith’s friend Juanita Green had unveiled a headstone on Smith’s previously unmarked grave, renewing focus on the extraordinary vocalist decades after her lifetime.

Pliny writes of the primacy of modeling sculpture in clay, even for “the most esteemed statues of the gods” (35.157) and even above the use of gold and silver for such effigies. Maloney’s portrait epitomizes the expressive power of the humble but versatile medium of terra-cotta. It captures Smith in a rapt moment between phrases: eyes and mouth closed, head tilted to one side, brow knitted in emotion.

(Andrew C. Weislogel, “Wonder and Wakefulness: The Nature of Pliny the Elder,” exhibition organized by the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, curated by Andrew C. Weislogel and Verity J. Platt, presented at the Johnson Museum January 21–June 11, 2023)