Without Feather Boa

1965

Without Feather Boa, 1965. Emma Amos (American, 1937–2020). Color etching and aquatint; image: 76.2 x 57.2 cm (30 x 22 1/2 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Alma Kroeger Fund 2021.142 Emma Amos used the creative potential of printmaking to address issues of race, gender, and social inequity. This print features a self-portrait in which the artist appears topless, gazing directly at the viewer through a pair of opaque sunglasses. Its varied patterning suggests Amos’s training in fabric design, as well as her interest in experimenting with and developing her own methods of etching. Amos selected the work to be included in the first and only exhibition of Spiral, an influential Black artists’ collective of which she was the youngest and only female member, in 1965. Emma Amos revisited the self-portrait seen in this print in a painting entitled Baby (1966, Whitney Museum), in which she appears against a colorful abstract background.