Looking more closely at Caribbean art

Letter from Laura Tanna

Art In The Caribbean - An Introduction is an absolutely marvellous book. Small enough to carry with you to read anywhere - eight and a half inches square and just half an inch thick - but encyclopedic in breadth of information, not just on art but also on the history of the Caribbean.

This book should be required reading in schools or, at the very least, available in every school library. This is a book everyone living in the Caribbean will enjoy.

Richly illustrated with a cover photograph of Trinidadian Carlisle Chang's vivid mural, 'The Inherent Nobility of Man', this book helps preserve what once was destroyed. Commissioned for Piarco International Airport, Chang's major work - a complex homage to the island's Amerindian/African/ancestral development - was destroyed in 1977 when the airport was enlarged. The wrap-around cover photograph allows everyone now to examine in detail Chang's masterpiece, discussed on page 14 of the text.

The book's format allows for great ease in following a vast amount of information. Forty artists have been selected for individual study. Each is given a page of text on the left, opposite a full-page colour example of the artist's work. The authors describe each work in detail, then place the work within a cultural context and finally provide a brief synopsis of the artist's biography. All 40 entries follow this format, so you know where to look for analysis or biography.

Fascinating information

Initially, the direct, short sentences suggest the authors' desire to reach a wide audience, potentially as an educational text; but the information is so fascinating, so well presented, that one soon welcomes the simplicity of style, for it enhances one's ability to absorb the Caribbean's complex history.

Having visited many of the major art museums or galleries in the Caribbean over the years, and having read a fair number of regional art books, I know my Cazabons from my Hakewells, my Correias from my Rodney Harracks, my Williamses from my Hydes, but 'I never saw the banana' might well have been this article's title. Jamaican John Dunkley is one of my favourite artists. Countless times I've regarded his 'Banana Plantation' painting in our National Gallery. Never once have I seen the banana at the painting's bottom edge, encapsulated with the rabbit.

'Looking at Caribbean art more care-fully' might have been a subtitle for this book, because that is exactly what Anne Walmsley and Stanley Greaves do. Their descriptions make you really stop and examine the art works more thoroughly than you otherwise would and, as a result, see more and understand more of the artist's vision.

While their selection of biographical information is varied, some of it really resonated with me. To cite one artist, I swear I always mispronounced Wifredo Lam's name as Wilfredo. I never knew his father was from China and his mother Spanish/Congolese, nor that his godmother was a Santeria priestess, nor even that he fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. I just knew I loved his work and that he'd been influenced by his time in Paris. Now I better appreciate his Afro-Cuban influences.

Of the 40 works, 16 are examples of painting, nine sculptures, eight installations, and the rest bas relief, ceramics, drawings and photographs, so a balance is sought in representing the variety of Caribbean art. But, in addition to the 80 pages on specific artists, what makes this book of such value is the further 80 pages on historical background.

Historical background

From pre-Columbian to AD1500, colonial and early Independence 1500-1900, through modern and contemporary 1900-2010, these chapters - each with two or three colour examples in the margin of every other page - situate many more artists and art movements within the region's political reality. From the intricacies of Amerindian cultures and migrations to the Spanish, French, British and Dutch colonial interventions, to individual country histories, this book has it all - art and politics - in such a concise but readable volume that you'll want to keep this treasure in your library as a reference tool.

Obviously comprehensive research was involved in producing this gem, and the desire to include as many colourful characters and highlights as possible may account for the smaller type used in the historical half, perhaps the volume's only flaw. Get out your magnifying glass if necessary. Believe me, it's worth the read.

British-born Anne Walmsley, specialising in Caribbean art and literature, with degrees and publications to prove it, is no stranger to Jamaica. Indeed, it is gratifying to see that her simple 'Art of the Caribbean' postcard pack for schools, created in 2003, has grown into this distinguished volume with the collaboration of Guyanese-born artist, art teacher and poet Stanley Greaves as co-author, and the assistance of Trinidadian-born artist and writer Christopher Cozier as advisor. For readers wishing to delve more deeply into individual artists, movements or countries, one need only read the authors' extensive acknowledgements, preface, time lines, bibliography and information on illustrations for guidance and inspiration.

Available in Jamaica through Novelty Trading, or in the UK www.newbeaconbooks.co.uk.