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30177: Lally (review) ,Demme's Collection at Ramapo (fwd)
From: Reynald Lally <concordehaiti@yahoo.com>
February 11, 2007
Art Review
From the New York Times
Haitian Revelation By BENJAMIN GENOCCHIO
Mahwah
The show of Haitian art at Ramapo College is a rare and affirmative statement
of a remarkable artistic tradition. A wonder and a revelation, the exhibition
concentrates on artists associated with the Centre d’Art in Haiti, where an
important movement of self-taught artists emerged in the 1940s and 1950s. All
the work on display in the Kresge Foundation Gallery is drawn from the private
collection of the filmmaker Jonathan Demme, a former artist in residence at the
college. Mr. Demme agreed to an exhibition of his works here after learning
that the college had a collection of Haitian outsider and folk art donated by
Selden Rodman, an American critic, collector and former co-director of the
Centre d’Art. That work is on permanent display in the Selden Rodman Gallery of
Popular Arts across campus in the main academic building, known as Wing B.
(Visitors with time might also find that exhibition worthwhile.) Though most of
the names will be unfamiliar to the casual viewer, many of the artists in the
present show are acknowledged masters of outsider art, a term often applied to
artists without formal training. Among them are Hector Hyppolite, Philome Obin,
Wilson Bigaud and Castera Bazile, all of whose works are sought after by
collectors and museums. Two of the paintings by Mr. Hyppolite in this show were
once owned by André Breton, the founder of the French Surrealist movement. The
works are mostly small, vibrantly colorful paintings of village scenes,
religious ceremonies, portraits and tropical fruit and flowers. Their power and
allure derive in no small measure from their sentimentality, the nostalgic
subject matter coupled with a rawness of execution. Little wonder early art
critics labeled this work primitive and naïve, an appraisal reflected in the
title of the exhibition.
But critics have come to appreciate the unique coloration and compositional
qualities of the work, which rather than being primitive or naïve actually
suggests a unique, independent movement of modernist art in Haiti. The artists
were way out ahead of the critics and the public.
Mr. Hyppolite (1894-1948) was a remarkable talent, turning to painting in the
last years of his life after working as a shoemaker, a plantation laborer and a
vodun priest. Using his fingers, brushes of chicken feathers and enamel paint
made for use on furniture, he produced about 150 paintings, many with strong
religious themes blending vodun and Catholic imagery and traditions. He
believed he was called by spirits to paint.
Mr. Hyppolite’s paintings are often roughly rendered and occasionally messy,
but they are always rich and full of joy. This joyous sense also pervades
Toussaint Auguste’s paintings of everyday life in the countryside. In one we
see a group of women preparing a feast of tropical fruits; in another a family
works together to grind grain into flour. Each is a marvelous lake of color.
Also on display is a selection of rare woodblock prints by artists associated
with the Centre d’Art, along with several metal sculptures by Georges Liautaud,
Haiti’s pre-eminent self-taught modern sculptor. They are spirit figures
mostly, hewn from metal sheets cut from discarded oil drums. To complement the
main display in the Kresge gallery, the adjoining Pascal gallery is showing a
small selection of work by Haitian artists associated with the Centre d’Art.
Some are drawn from the college’s permanent Rodman collection, with the rest on
loan from Carole Rodman, Mr. Rodman’s widow. These paintings range in date from
the 1940s to the present. There are works by Mr. Hyppolite and Mr. Obin, among
other early masters, as well as by artists of the generation who followed in
their footsteps. An example is Buffon Thermidor, who was influenced by Mr.
Obin’s more playful, realistic Cap Haitien style of painting.
Mr. Thermidor appears to have had some contact with fine art institutions,
judging by his style and presentation, but his colorful imagery gives viewers
no less pleasure. What does the label “outsider artist” mean anyway? Looking at
the marvelous paintings here by two generations of Haitian artists, you begin
to realize it doesn’t really matter. “An Apparently Unimportant Event:
Self-Taught from the Centre d’Art in the 1940s and 50s,” Kresge and Pascal
galleries, Berrie Center, Ramapo College, 505 Ramapo Valley Road, Mahwah,
through March 7. Information: www.ramapo.edu/berriecenter /galleries or (201)
684-7147.
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