Devotion to style and color: art expert Gerald Alexis explores the vibrant history of Haitian art, from the naive and primitive to the abstract and contemporary.

• Author: Alexis, Gerald

Unlike Haitian literature, fine arts in Haiti did not have much institutional support in the 1800s and early 1900s and suffered from the total absence of art schools, museums, and galleries. Haitians who were in the position to purchase art often praised the national awareness exalted in Indigenist prose and poetry, but they seemed totally insensitive to the creative abilities of the local painters. These intellectuals appreciated the poetry of Etzer Vilaire, Normil Sylvain, and Leon Laleau, and the writings of Jean Price-Mars, Jacques Roumain, and Jacques-Stephen Alexis. but their taste for the visual arts remained fashioned on traditional European trends, and they preferred the comfort of classical masterpieces, which they could enjoy only through prints and reproductions.

Some have even said that there were no fine arts in Haiti prior to 1944. That was the year the Centre d'Art was inaugurated as "a center where Haitians would come to paint and exchange ideas without having to follow academic lectures, fostering a state of mind favorable to artistic development."

The Centre d'Art was started at the initiative of Dewitt Peters, an American artist who came to Haiti to teach English in 1934 and who eventually contributed a great deal to the development of Haitian painting. The Centre was intended to be a meeting place for artists, a place where talented young men and women could find guidance. Its inaugural exhibition presented works by some twenty artists who had been struggling against all odds to get recognition. Soon after, those same artists were overshadowed by the unexpected arrival of popular painters who were creating an art that totally ignored western conventions. This art, coined "naive" by some and "primitive" by others, won high praise from American critics and well known personalities, like French poet Andre Breton and American novelist Truman Capote.

In 1946, Haitian art appeared outside the country for the first time in a Washington, DC gallery. The exhibition presented exclusively the works of the country's popular painters, however, which led Haiti to be known as "the only country in the world whose entire artistic output was represented by works of naive painters, primitive, not only in their approach, but also in their complete lack of academic training," according to a press release from the Carol Reese Museum of East Tennessee State University. Similar commentary followed. One article by Paul Waggoner published in the Contemporary Times suggested that Haiti "had no previous art tradition" and that Dewitt Peters had accomplished a "miracle."

These critics overlooked the fact that such popular expressions had existed for years prior to the arrival of Peters. Haitian popular art has always been closely related to the popular religion--Voodoo--and it has been a constant presence in society due to the Haitian people's extravagant taste for decoration. The critics also overlooked the tradition of portraits and historical paintings that dominated the nineteenth century.

The wars that devastated the colony of Saint-Domingue during the second half of the eighteenth century had several important consequences, including the abolition of slavery and the independence of the new nation of Haiti in 1804. Then, even as the newly conquered territories were defended and the infinite tasks of nation-building began, new traditions in the arts gradually emerged, particularly in the field of portrait and historical painting.

Under the government of President Jean-Pierre Boyer (1818-1843) it was fashionable to have your portrait painted by professional artists, and Boyer commissioned different...