a1308: Re: a1296: more from the "Arts Ghetto" (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Mysteries@aol.com

No you do not want a Dewitt Peters.  You definitely beyond the vaguest shadow
of a doubt do not want a Dewitt Peters.  You want someone who understands
diasporic art from anywhere in the world and especially the African-Atlantic
disaspora.  you do not want someone who tampers with the spiritual ideas of a
people but rather someone who sees the place of Haitian vernacular artists in
terms of their homeground importance and has a wider vision of its
contextualization in art and history throughout the world.

Dewitt Peters, while well-meaning, was an artifact.  Someone who was trapped
by certain ideas of his time. The field has moved way beyond that now.  There
are many people off all nationalities and races who qualify more than peters.
 But it will never work until there is a realization of just how the work
fits into world art history.  and that history is only being written as we
speak.

To break out of a ghetto one needs to fully understand what one needs to take
with him and what one needs to leave behind.  Haitian verancular art and its
contemporary art are not a phenomenon unto themselves.  They need to be
accepted on their own terms by the so-called mainstream that holds all art
not made by the academy at colonialistic bay.

Dewitt Peters was not equipped (through no fault of his own) to deal with
these issues.

Randall