Caribbean Bloggers

Off Topic -

I've set up a site with the aim of showing the feeds of Caribbean bloggers (both those at home and abroad). True you can do this on your blog yourself, but you might not want to because it will crowd your blog, or because it's too time consuming. So now you don't have to do it, because I've done it for you. Just put a link from there to your blog and when you want to, you can see what everyone is up to with one click. I do have one feature on there- I will spotlight a Caribbean blogger for each month. How cool is that?

More African-Jamaican similarities in art

Patricia Bryan identifies seven elements of African art that are visible in Jamaican art, she suggests two ways in which they were retained; retention by predisposition and intuition. She bases her case about intuition on Jung's offereing in Instinct and the Unconscious where he defines intuition as "an unconscious process [whose] result is the interruption into unconscious content". The individual draws upon the collective unconscious through which submerged cultural memories can resurface. In other words, as David Boxer puts it, intuition as demonstrated by artists such as Mallica (Kapo) Reynolds, William (Woody) Joseph and Everald Brown is that ability to reach "into the depths of the subconscious to rekindle century old traditions".

One of the seven elements of African art mentioned by Bryan is the emphasis placed on geometric shapes like the cylinder, the sphere, the cone. (Some art historians believe that when Cubists, primarily Picasso took up Cessanne's idea of treating nature as variations of these shapes, they possibly turned to African sculpture which predated Cessanne's idea.)

Another element of African art that is visible in Jamaican art is the emphasis on essential elelments such as the feet and the reproductive organs. Feet are usually firmly grounded and the breasts, abdomen and genetalia well displayed.

I will write some more about the connections between African and Jamaican art. But you can look out for some of those colourful Jamaican expressions that originated in Africa. Like "What a buffro buffro man!" Or "Mine me craw-craw you up!"

Photo sources: https://www.africadirect.com/productsdesc.php?

http://www.panamericanart.com/artists_viewall/WOODYWilliamJoseph.php