Jamaican art dates back to Jamaica

Jamaica

Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

's indigenous Taino

Taíno people

The Taínos were pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Bahamas, Greater Antilles, and the northern Lesser Antilles. It is thought that the seafaring Taínos are relatives of the Arawak people of South America...

 Indians who created zemi

Zemi

A Zemi or Cemi is a Taíno concept, meaning both a deity, or ancestral spirit, and a sculptural object that houses the spirit. They were also created by neighboring tribes in the Caribbean and northern South America.-Theology:...

s, carvings of their gods, for ritual spiritual purposes. The demise of this culture after European colonisation heralded a new era of art production more closely related to traditional tastes in Europe and created by itinerant artists keen to return picturesque images of the 'new world' to Europe. Foremost among these were Agostino Brunias

Agostino Brunias

Agostino Brunias was a London-based Italian painter from Rome. Strongly associated with West Indian art, he left England at the height of his career to chronicle Dominica and the neighboring islands of the West Indies...

, Philip Wickstead, James Hakewill

James Hakewill

James Hakewill was an English architect, best known for his illustrated publications.-Life:The second son of John Hakewill, he was brought up as an architect, and exhibited some designs at the Royal Academy...

 and J. B. Kidd. Perhaps the earliest artist to take a more Jamaican centered approach to the island culture was Isaac Mendes Belisario (1795–1849), whose portfolio of lithographs Sketches of Character, In Illustration of the Habits, Occupation, and Costume of the Negro Population in the Island of Jamaica, published in collaboration with the lithographer Adolphe Duperly in 1837-38, documents activities of slaves immediately after their emancipation.

The modern movement

The National Gallery of Jamaica

National Gallery of Jamaica

The National Gallery of Jamaica, in Kingston, Jamaica, is Jamaica's premier art collection. It is located in the Kingston Mall, a commercial and cultural center on Kingston harbour....

 dates the nationalist

Nationalism

Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...

 oriented art movement to the beginning of the twentieth century. The arrival of Edna Manley

Edna Manley

Edna Manley OM was a sculptor and contributor to Jamaican culture, as well as the wife of Norman Manley, the founder of the Jamaican People's National Party. She is often considered the "mother of Jamaican art". She is the daughter of English cleric Harvey Swithenbank and a Jamaican woman by the...

 in Jamaica in 1922 since her observations and journals on art and artists from that time has provided early documentation on the movement's development and her work Bead Seller (1922) has been used as the earliest work in the National Gallery of Jamaica's permanent collection of modern Jamaican art. On arrival in Jamaica having been raised and educated in the UK, she publicly criticized Jamaica's local art work as "anaemic" believing that it demonstrated a preoccupation with European styled landscapes and portraiture using traditional techniques that insufficiently reflected Jamaica's culture or its people. Her support for volunteer art classes at the Institute of Jamaica that fostered the talents of artists such as Albert Huie

Albert Huie

Albert Huie was a Jamaican painter.Huie moved to Kingston when he was 16 years old; in the 1930s he became part of the "Institute Group" at the Institute of Jamaica, where he received his first formal training, with Koren der Harootian.In the early 1940s he worked as an assistant...

, Ralph Campbell, Henry Daley and Osmond Watson

Osmond Watson

Osmond Watson was a Jamaican painter and sculptor.Born in Kingston, Watson attended art classes at the Junior Centre of the Institute of Jamaica from 1948 until 1952; from that year until 1958 he attended the Jamaica School of Art in Kingston...

 would become formalized into an art program offered at the Jamaica School of Art, an institution that even later was named the Edna Manley College of Visual Arts as a tribute to her contribution.

During the 1950s and 1960s many of Jamaica's artists received formal training in Britain as a result of scholarships provided by the British Council

British Council

The British Council is a United Kingdom-based organisation specialising in international educational and cultural opportunities. It is registered as a charity both in England and Wales, and in Scotland...

. Ralph Campbell attended classes at Goldsmiths College, Barrington Watson

Barrington Watson

Barrington Watson is Jamaica’s master painter. Born in 1931 in Lucea, Jamaica, Barrington Watson made his original mark in Jamaica as a football player for Kingston College. However, he ultimately followed his artistic yearnings by enrolling at the Royal College of Art in London. He traveled...

 trained at the Royal College of Art, Osmond Watson at St Martins. Each developed their own representational styles influenced by post-impressionism, realism and cubism respectively and all returned to teach at the Jamaica School Art.

Jamaican art since the island's Independence in 1962 swings between two styles that Chief Curator David Boxer has defined as "mainstream" and "intuitive". The first references Jamaica's trained artists more often exposed to art trends and styles abroad, and the second, the 'intuitive' movement comprising artists who maintain stronger links with African forms of expression, are predominantly closed to any external influences, and are usually self-taught. During the 1980s a trend towards the fusion of these two styles was apparent in the work of artists such as Milton George, Robert Cookhoorne (aka African or Omari Ra) and Douglas Wallace (aka Makandal or Khalfani Ra). Smithsonian curator Vera Hyatt labelled them New Imagists referencing the way the body in convulsive forms dominated their canvases.

Recent trends

In the 1990s a greater awareness of post-modern trends and a connection with Jamaica's wider diaspora communities in Britain, Canada and the USA saw many artists such as Albert Chong

Albert Chong

Albert Chong is an artist of African and Chinese descent. His works are mainly photographs, but he also works with installations and sculptures. Chong states that the purpose of much of his art is to "represent and reanimate his family history."...

, Anna Henriques, Petrona Morrison, Margaret Chen, David Boxer reappraising their personal cultural histories, re-visiting the sites of their ancestral origins (be they indigenous Amerindian cultures, African or European) having a greater need to understand and visualise the Jamaican experience and their own sense of place within the Caribbean. But events in Jamaica have overtaken these concerns turning an even younger generation of artist's attention inwards.

Whereas many of Jamaica's contemporary artists in the 1990s were concerned with post-colonial issues of identity and place and explored this through group shows such as the Caribbean biennales and regional exhibitions that allowed them to establish commonality with artists from other islands, art of this past decade appears to be shifting in focus once again Younger artists such as Ebony Patterson

Ebony Patterson

Ebony G. Patterson is a Jamaican artist born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1981. She has taught in the Edna Manley College of Visual and Performing Arts, the Sam Fox College of Design & Visual at Washington University in St. Louis...

[Ebony G. Patterson], Michael Elliot, Phillip Thomas, Christopher Irons and Peter Rickards are engaging with issues of violence, homophobia and social dislocation that have been a feature of Jamaica's recent past. These are events and trends that are still unfolding but they suggest that this generation of artists is having to compete with the more glaring aspects of the country's popular culture related to dance hall, ghetto fabulous fashions, street art, and the aesthetics of bling funerals for a stake in the nation's visual memory.
Jane Issa on the use of contemporary art in hotels