Notes From Leogane No. 10

Part 1: The Trinity Murals

Dear Family and Friends:

During the past two days, I have been overwhelmed with Haitian beauty.  I have just completed a "web tour", so to speak, of works by some of the many Haitian artists who have painted since the founding of the l'Centre d'Art in Port-au-Prince in the early 1940s.

I remember little from my freshman year Art History class at Arizona State in the fall of 1965. I do recall, however, the thought expressed then, and repeated many times since, that a painting is to be seen and that extraneous banter can at times interfere with appreciation of a work of art. For that reason, the written part of this note should be, and is, dominated by the photographs attached to three parts of Note No. 10.

On many occasions since I arrived in Haiti, I have heard people describe the irreparable loss on January 12, 2010 of thousands of Haitian art treasures, not the least of which the murals at the
Episcopal Trinity Cathedral, and so this note starts there. Part 2 will focus on the "Naive" school of Haitian painting. Part 3 discusses some of the more "modern" Haitian artists.

THE MURALS OF THE EPISCOPAL TRINITY CATHEDRAL
This from a 28 February 2011 newsletter by the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C.:

"More than a year after a devastating earthquake struck Haiti, the famed murals at St. Trinity Cathedral in Port-au-Prince are coming down.  A team of Americans and Haitians, led by conservators Viviana Dominguez and Rosa Lowinger, and working under the auspices of the Smithsonian's Haiti Cathedral Recovery Project, is carefully removing the three surviving murals from the ruined walls of the destroyed Episcopal Church in order to preserve them for the future.

Fourteen life-sized murals depicting scenes from the New Testament were painted on the interior walls of the cathedral in the late 1940s and early 1950s by eight of Haiti's most celebrated artists associated with the Centre d'Art and its characteristic vernacular style.  The murals were controversial at the time because they depicted Haitians in biblical roles, but many saw them as representing the way Haitians adapted Christianity.

Only three murals survived the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake - “The Last Supper" by Philome Obin, "Native Procession" by Prefete Duffant and "The Baptism of Christ" by Castera Bazile – and all were severely damaged.

Once the mural fragments are safely stored, the conservators will help design ways to reassemble the murals so that they can be installed onsite once a new cathedral is rebuilt by the Episcopal Church…."

The attached photographs of the Trinity Cathedral Murals, before and after the earthquake speak for themselves.

David

22 May 2011 - Part 1

Part 2: l’Centre d’Art and Its Artists and the Naïve Move

Dear Family and Friends:

The attached photographs are labeled with the name of the artist, surname first, and the title of the painting.

The following discuss the founding of l'Centre d'Art, the development of its artists, and the Naive movement of Haitian painting:

"The notion of making a living by creating and selling art first came to Haiti in the 1940s, when an American watercolorist named DeWitt Peters moved to Port-au-Prince.  Peters, a conscientious objector to the world war then underway, took a job teaching English and was struck by the raw artistic expression he found at every turn - even on the local buses known as tap-taps.

He founded Centre d'Art in 1944 to organize and promote untrained artists, and within a few years, word had gone out that something special was happening in Haiti.  During a visit to the center in 1945, Andre Breton, the French writer, poet and leader of the cultural movement known as Surrealism, swooned over the work of a self-described houngan (voodoo priest) and womanizer Hector Hyppolite, who often painted with chicken feathers.  Hyppolite's creations, on subjects ranging from still life to voodoo spirits to scantily clad women (presumed to be his mistresses), sold for a few dollars each. But, Breton wrote, 'all carried the stamp of total authenticity.'

Hyppolite died of a heart attack in 1948, three years after joining Centre d'Art and one year after his work was displayed at a triumphant (for Haiti as well as him) United Nations- sponsored exhibition in Paris.

Although some nicely done Haitian paintings could be bought for a few hundred dollars, the best works by early masters such as Hyppolite and Philome Obin (a devout Protestant who painted scenes from Haitian history, the Bible and his family's life) eventually commanded tens of thousands of dollars.  The Museum of Modern Art in New York City and the Hirschhorn in Washington, D.C. added Haitian primitives to their collections…."

(In Haiti, the Art of Resilience, by Bill Brubaker, Smithsonian Magazine September 2010)

"The Naive Art movement and the Centre d'Art In the 1940s, Dewitt Peters, an American school teacher arrived in Haiti.  Almost immediately he was stricken by the raw talent displayed by many untrained and in many cases uneducated painters he would encounter.  Those were people who never went to art school, workers of all trades, who would come home and produce marvels of indigenous art work.  In 1944, he founded the Centre d'Art in Port-au-Prince.  The Centre d'Art became the champion of the art form that would be called "Naive Art", or better called "intuitive art."  Intuitive painting is characterized by vivid, raw colors, a spatial composition and use of proportions that did not abide by any laws of modern aesthetics, but rather revealed spontaneity, freedom of expression and freshness. That art form would attain notoriety on the world scale, especially with the arrival of co-director Selden Rodman.  Selden Rodman rejected modernism, the leading art movement of the time, as being too post-war, too vanguard and therefore too socially inclined. Contrary to what many manuals wrote, neither the Centre d'Art nor DeWitt Peters invented Naive art.  Nevertheless, they are credited for their efforts in having brought it to the attention of the Western World.

The primitives of the first generation received worldwide acclaim. Critics and collectors received that movement as 'authentic' and 'unspoiled'.  The main heroes of that movement were otherwise common, non-artistically trained folk who had great talent. They were Andre Pierre, Hector Hyppolite (1894 - 1948), Castera Bazile (1923 - 66), Wilson Bigaud (b. 1931) and Rigaud Benoit (b. 1911).  Vaudou was prominently featured in the works of those artists.  Andre Pierre and Hyppolite themselves were vaudou priests.

The cornerstone piece of the Primitive Art School has to be the mural project of the Cathedral of Sainte Trinite (Holy Trinity).  For that mural, Bazile and Bigaud placed traditional religious motifs like the Ascension of Christ in a very Haitian context. Characters were painted with black faces, while drums and sacrificial animals were featured in a few of the paintings.  The Primitive Movement  was accompanied by great controversy.  Many other Haitian artists, the intelligentsia and the elite alike resented the seal of authenticity attached to Naive Art….

There are many offshoots to the Naive Movement.  Philome Obin would create the School of Cap-Haitian that included artists such as Seneque Obin (1893 - 1977), his younger brother.

Second generation intuitive painters include Gerard Vacin (1925 - 88), Wilmino Domond, Seymour Bottex, Gabriel Alix, Gesner Armand and Prefete Duffaunt (b. 1923).  The second generation is characterized by a certain departure from the style of the original masters of the 40s.  Many of these artists like Armand would through their travels learn other techniques and would use them to enrich and solidify their original style…. "

(Haitian Art, Brikouri Forums, Brikouir.com)

David

22 May 2011 - Part 2

Part 3: Contemporary Haitian Artists

Dear Family and Friends:

My "web gallery" tour brought forth an abundance of contemporary Haitian paintings, though little in the way of commentary about modern or contemporary Haitian artists.  I did find the following though:

"The tale of contemporary Haitian art speaks to humanity's innate drive for self-expression and how this passion has never been constrained by something as trivial as poverty.  . . . More than simply idiosyncratic styles of painting and sculpture, contemporary Haitian art is powerful and plentiful enough to be classified as a category unto itself.  Even though Haiti is often touted as the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, the very title "Voudou Riche" frames this exhibition with a view that is rife with the spiritual abundance at the core of Haiti's vibrant people…."

(Review of the "Vodou Riche : Contemporary Haitian Art" exhibition at College Columbia College, Chicago, Illinois, August 27 - October 16, 2007)

"At the Centre d'Art, Andre Pierre and other primitive artists had enhanced the reputation of Haitian art, while Gesner Armand joined the ranks of the sophisticated artists.

Founded in the early '60s, Calfou was the last great association of Haitian artists.  With Bernard Wah, painting took a decisive turn toward l'Esthetique de la Beaute.  This school, which is more formal and less socially engaged, made a definitive break with l'Indigenisme.  It found its more forceful expression in the works of Bernard Sejurne, Jean-Rene Jerome, Simil, Jean-Pierre Theard, Carol Theard, Jean-Claude Legagneur, and Philippe Dodard.  A the margin of l'Ecole de la Beaute, one should mention such artists as Ronald Mews, Fravrange Valcin, Celestin Faustin, and Jean-Claude Garoute (known as Tiga).

Today the vitality of Haitian art, both in Haiti and abroad is an astonishing reality.  Today's promising artists are numerous, such as Lyonel St. Eloi, Marithou Latortue Dupoux, Fritzodt Antoine, Pascal Moin, Joselus Joseph, Pascal Smarth, Engels, Odille Latortue, Albert Desmangles, Elie Lescot Jr., Essud Fungcap, Marilene Phipps [now Marilene Phipps-Kettlewell], Patrick Wah and Jean Marcel Wah, Jr.  And more than ever, its future is assured.”

(From "Brief History of Haitian Art", by Michel-Philippe Lerebours, Curator of the Musee d'Art Haitien du College Saint Pierre, 30 November 2009)

I close with a more detailed discussion of Haitian contemporary artist Frantz Zephirin, who had one of his paintings chosen, after the earthquake, as the cover for the January 25, 2010 cover of New Yorker magazine.  In addition to the attached photographs of various of the contemporary artists listed by Michel-Philippe Lerebours, the two Zephirin paintings discussed here are attached:

"The cover of this week's New Yorker is titled "The Resurrection of the Dead."  It was painted by the Haitian artist Frantz Zephirin.

'The Resurrection of the Dead' is not a direct response to the catastrophic earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12th; Zephirin painted it in 2007.  But Bill Bollendorf, who runs the Galerie Macondo, in Pittsburgh, explained that the three skeletal figures in the doorway are "guede", members of a family of spirits who guard the frontier between life and death.  The woman in the wedding dress is Gran' Brigete, and the man in the blue uniform is her husband, Baron Samedi.

Elizabeth McAlister, an associate professor of religion at Wesleyan University who specializes in Haiti . . . offered additional interpretation of the symbolism in the cover image.  She understood the wall surrounding the doorway to be filled with the unblinking faces of the spirits of the recently dead.  Just crossed over, they still have eyes, which are the blue and red of the Haitian
flag.

She went on:

Below them are the waters, the waters under which lies the country without hats, where the sun rises facing backwards.  This is where the dead spend a year and a day.  "An badlo."  Under the water.  Resting. Floating.  After that when it is time, they will be lifted out, drawn out, by their living.  If they are lucky to have children living and walking on the earth.

The dead are still with us, in the unseen world.  They have space. They have time.  They have company.  They are not alone.  They will be received.  They will hear prayers.  They look at us.

In his paintings, Zephirin will refer to, and comment upon, history, politics, and Christianity and voodoo. . . ."

(The New Yorker, Cover Story, by Blake Eskin)

Frantz Zephirin has already incorporated the earthquake into a painting, which Zepirin describes:

"I wanted to show Haitians in a sea of blood.", but then said that amid the hands in the sea of blood "Haiti will be reborn."

(The New Yorker, Cover Story)

I hope this note provides you with some sense of the vibrancy of the works of some of Haiti's better known painters, and the promise of the new generation.

I also hope this note finds you and your loved ones in good health and spirits.

David

22 May 2011 - Part 3