About Jamaican Art

The Jamaican flag

Jamaica is an island nation in the Caribbean Sea, approximately 90 miles south of Cuba. While it is perhaps best known as the birthplace of dancehall culture, reggae music, street art and ghetto-fabulous fashion, visual art has also played a significant role in the country's culture.

History

The first works of Jamaican art were created by the island's indigenous Indians, the Tainos, who would create zemis---carved statues of gods---for uses in rituals. After Jamaica was colonized by Europeans, traveling artists would paint pictures of the Jamaican landscape, beaches and street scenes, mostly to be sent back to Europe by the colonizers as gifts. It was not until the early 20th century that a nationalist movement in Jamaican art emerged.

National Style

Edna Manley, who arrived on the island in the early 1920s, is credited with the emergence of a national style of Jamaican art. An artist and teacher from the United Kingdom, she criticized the art of Jamaica for being overly influenced by European trends and techniques, and not reflective of Jamaica's true culture. She helped foster training for some of Jamaica's leading artists, and the island's first art institute would eventually be renamed the Edna Manley College of Visual Arts, in homage to her efforts.

Time Frame

Notable landmarks in the evolution of Jamaican art include the collection of lithographs called "Sketches of Character, In Illustration of the Habits, Occupation, and Costume of the Negro Population in the Island of Jamaica," which documented the lives of slaves post-emancipation. The lithographs were created by Isaac Mendes Belisario in 1838. Manley's work, "The Bead Sellers," is considered the first major work in Jamaican modern art. It was created in 1922. Jamaican Modernism continued to evolve throughout the 1950s and '60s, when a number of the island's most prominent artists went to England to study. Since the 1990s, a pronounced postmodern trend can be seen in the work of many Jamaican artists.

Expert Insight

Curator and Jamaican art expert David Boxer delineated the two predominant modes of Jamaican art after the island's independence in 1962 as "mainstream" and "intuitive." The mainstream artists were those who had been exposed to trends from abroad, usually through training, and were thus more internationalist in their orientation than local. The intuitive artists, on the other hand, were largely self-taught, and tended to work from a vision that had its roots more in African forms of expression than in European and American trends.

Contemporary Art

Notable contemporary Jamaican artists include Ebony Patterson, Albert Chong, Barrington Watson and Phillip Thomas.

References

• "Jamaican Art 1922 --1982"; David Boxer; 1982
• "Modern Jamaican Art"; David Boxer and Veerle Poupeye; 1998