28518: Hermantin(News)Allegories from Demme's Haitian artists (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Sun Sentinel


Allegories from Demme's Haitian artists




-- Emma Trelles

June 25, 2006



"Allegories of Haitian Life from the Collection of Jonathan Demme" presents 
more than 80 paintings and sculptures by Haitian artists, as collected by the 
Academy-Award winning film director. Probably best known for The Silence of the 
Lambs and Philadelphia, Demme is also the force behind the documentaries Haiti: 
Dreams of Democracy and The Agronomist. He became a griot of sorts after 
visiting Haiti in the mid-'80s and falling under the spell of its rich visual 
culture.

It's easy to see why. Taking in the mid-century works of master Haitian 
painters such as Hector Hyppolite, Rigaud Benoit and Wilson Bigaud, and later 
works by Andre Saturne or Andre Pierre, one cannot resist their honest and 
detailed iconographies. They are embroidery stitched from worship and daily 
ritual: a culture of trees housing ancient spirits, roosters and sparrows 
carrying the promise of healing. There are deities decked in sequined robes and 
crowns, but there is also humble country life: a gardener tending his roses or 
women gathered at the village square to honor the harvest.

The exhibit is part of a tryptich celebrating Haitian culture at the Bass 
Museum of Art, and this portion, in particular, houses a wide sweep of styles 
and subjects.

By the show's finish, the contradictions make utter sense. Edger 
Jean-Baptiste's colossal-sized phantom straddling a moonlit street seems as 
natural as his sweet rendition of a couple courting on a pebbled beach. And 
Etienne Chavannes' frenzied rendering of a Port-au-Prince auto shop fits neatly 
with Ernst Prophète's stab at the perils of mass agriculture. Each scene is a 
verse, and the epic revealed is more than a history of Haiti, its paintings or 
even the elaborate faith known as Vodou. What comes into focus is the spirit of 
a people accustomed to living with both beauty and terror, magic and simplicity 
-- all at once.


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