The "Out of Many, One People" Design for Jamaica's new Parliament building (image source: JIS) Two years ago, the Government of Jamaica, launched a competition for the design of a new Parliament building, to be located in National Heroes Park. The winning proposal, which was announced in April 2019, was the design titled "Out of... Continue Reading →
Art Criticism and the Jamaican Art Ecology – Part 1
The self-taught artist Everald Brown with the author in 1987, in the Kapo Gallery at the National Gallery. Part of Kapo's head (and turban) can be seen to the right My blog has been rather quiet for the last two months (perhaps to the relief of some). The reasons have nothing to do with the... Continue Reading →
Notes on the Columbus Statues of the Caribbean
Ernesto Gilbert - Columbus (1887), Columbus Park, Santo Domingo (Photo: Veerle Poupeye, all righs reserved) This post is extracted from an ongoing and as yet incomplete research project on monuments and statues in the Caribbean. There is hardly an island in the Caribbean that does not have a Columbus monument and some have more than... Continue Reading →
Throwing Words at the Status Quo
Waldane Walker, 2019 Valedictorian, Edna Manley College One night, an evil spirit held me downI could not make one single soundJah told me, 'Son, use the word'And now I'm as free as a bird- Peter Tosh - Oh B@&#o k$&%t (1981) Every culture, and every language has its expletives and some are, well, more potent... Continue Reading →
From the Archives: Eugene Hyde (1931-1980)
Here is another excerpt from my doctoral dissertation, "Between Nation and Market: Art and Society in Twentieth Century Jamaica" (Emory, 2011) - (C) Veerle Poupeye, all rights reserved. The Independence Generation The years around Independence were, as the artist and critic Gloria Escoffery (1986) has argued, characterized by a combination of great ambitions and sometimes... Continue Reading →
Notes on Jamaica’s Art Histories #3: Intuitive Art as a Canon, Redux
As I continue my reflections on Jamaica's art histories, I am now sharing some of my thoughts on the Intuitive art designation, which has been an essential but problematic and controversial part of Jamaica's main art-historical narration. Earlier versions of this essay, which was itself extracted from my doctoral dissertation in progress (Emory, 2011 -... Continue Reading →