22926: radtimes: Haiti's true colors (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: radtimes <resist@best.com>

Haiti's true colors

http://www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldleader/living/events/9333343.htm

Collection reflects genre's evolution, culture's 'fun and joy'

Aug. 08, 2004
By Benita Heath
CONTRIBUTING ARTS WRITER

Huntington, W.Va -- It's a dragon of a different color. In a fanciful
painting on display at the Huntington Museum of Art, the monster about to
be slain by St. George is as magenta as a pitcher of strawberry Kool-Aid.

It's vivid, almost seductive and decidedly Haitian. All that is listed in
the catalogue for the show is a name -- Sauveur. There is not even a date
when the work was done. Yet it has at least one fan, the former design
director for Lennox China, Winslow Anderson, who bought the canvas decades ago.

In the past 50 years, Anderson, a New England native now living outside
Huntington, has amassed a collection of 158 examples of Haitian art, mainly
paintings, giving a tangible timeline to the genre often dismissed as
simplistic.

"As far as contemporary artists, people still think they are untrained and
unsophisticated. That's not true,'' says Jenine Culligan, senior curator at
the Huntington museum. "As far as earlier works go, there is an underlying
feeling that these people wanted to be artists and wanted to show their
world. They really do have this innate sense of composition and color. They
have a need to create. You can just feel that in the works.''

The story of the genre starts in the early 1940s when De Witt Peters, a
conscientious objector from Monterey, Calif., came to Haiti to teach
English. The military sent Peters to the island as alternative service
during World War II.

He soon became entranced with the primitive paintings of Haitians, even
though many were on scraps of leftover boards used for building. Peters
wanted to help those artists and found an old house that he turned into a
meeting place, calling it Le Centre d' Art.

"Le Centre was less a school than a place for artists to come obtain
materials and talk with others interested in the same thing,'' Culligan
says. "In that way, nobody was taught a certain way to paint. When you come
to see this show, you'll see every artist has a unique style.''

About five years after Le Centre opened, Anderson, then a designer for
Blenko Glass in Milton, W.Va., discovered Haiti, first through a book he
saw at a friend's house. In an essay for the show catalogue, Anderson writes:

"I was electrified by the illustrations of Haitian primitive paintings. At
that time I did not know the difference between Haiti and Tahiti. ... When
introduced to Haitian work, I saw, for the first time, fun and joy in
paintings, just as the musician would have fun in playing The Blue Danube
or The Beer Barrel Polka."

Anderson received a letter of introduction to Peters from a friend at the
Bureau of Cultural Relations and went south. That trip was the first of
many that brought about his extensive collection.

Bill Bollendorf, now based in Pittsburgh, has been a dealer in Haitian art
for 30 years. In that time he has seen its appeal cross socioeconomic lines.

"When people see it, it is very comforting,'' he says. "The paintings are
so comforting to have on your walls. They seem to discharge magic and
positive energy in the room.''

Recently, Bollendorf came to Huntington to lecture on Anderson's exhibit,
which he calls an important collection.

"Winslow was in the right place at the right time. When Winslow went to
Haiti, it was a time when you could buy these paintings for next to
nothing. He has most of the really important, major artists ... the first
generation artists, really the founding fathers.

"There are great examples of artists who went on to become much more
sophisticated, and there are those who disappeared from the scene but who
are great. This collection has great scope.''

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