Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The complex and colorful world of Caribbean art reflects the region's African, European, Asian, and native heritage. Despite the ethnic, linguistic, and political diversity of Caribbean artists, there is a cultural unity in their work that distinguishes it in the larger context of North American and Latin American art. Following a discussion of the pre-Columbian and colonial eras, the author describes how pioneering national art movements in the first half of the twentieth century helped to define an indigenous aesthetic, and how revolution, anti-imperialism, and race-consciousness in the turbulent sixties and seventies affected the face of art. There is a strong relationship between Caribbean popular culture and art, and the book explores the importance of African-Caribbean religions such as Voodoo, Santaria, and Rastfarianism, as well as the influence of Trinidad carnival, the Junkanoo masquerade of the Bahamas, and similar traditions. This wonderfully illustrated survey covers a wide range of artists who have lived and worked in the Caribbean, as well as those who have left the islands but whose background plays a significant role in their work, providing a compelling look at a great body of original and imaginative art.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

This compact, well-illustrated volume is the first general historical survey of Caribbean art produced by the Creole culture, a mixture of African, Amerindian, Asian, and European origins encompassing more than 20 countries. More than 100 artists are discussed--most of them little known--with 177 illustrations, 76 in color. European-educated art historian and critic Poupeye, a specialist who lectures on the subject in Jamaica, has produced a valuable, balanced, and readable book that is a considerable addition to scholarship on the topic, and also to the study of modernism and contemporary art of the 20th century. Seven chapters cover the political climate of Prehispanic and Colonial art, cultural nationalism, and popular arts including the significant contribution of Carnival, themes of revolution and racial consciousness, nature, the "Self and the Other," and art from the 1980s and 1990s. Poupeye identifies individual countries usually understood as part of the Caribbean geographical presence, taking a wide view, including, e.g., "the Guianas" of South America. She discusses Haitian Vaudou, "Caribbeanness," the role of "primitive" Caribbean art and the possibility of racial stereotyping, and what is termed the Caribbean "Plantation America." Highly recommended as an excellent survey and reference book. General readers; graduates; faculty. M. Hamel-Schwulst; Towson University

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Veerle Poupeye is a Belgian-Jamaican art historian, curator, and critic. Previously executive director of the National Gallery of Jamaica, she now lectures at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in Kingston, Jamaica, where she is based. She has written books, articles, and exhibition catalogue essays on Jamaican and Caribbean art and culture and contributed to the journalsSmall Axe, Jamaica Journal, Caribbean Quarterly, and the New West Indian Guide.