My friend Ray recently replied to a discussion on Barbados Free Press (BFP) which started when a restaurant critic writing for the New York Post criticized the art in the gallery, On the Wall in Champers Restaurant, Rockley.
I like his argument that art is not a “decoration, but should be life changing, looking at things from a different angle, be unsettling and upsetting, not something to match your sofa”.
Read his essay below. First, this is what BFP had to say:
Barbados Free Press
November 9, 2006
Food Critics Should Stick To Food – And Maybe Not Even That
My visit to the On The Wall Gallery website was prompted by a largely negative Barbados restaurant review by “Lydia Gordon” that appeared in the New York Post. A stuck-up Ms. Gordon had found fault with not only the food at Champers, but also with the paintings on display.
Art is a matter of personal taste, but after visiting the On The Wall Gallery website one thing is very obvious..
If the drunken, nose-in-the-air “restaurant critic” for the New York Post couldn’t see any Barbados art she liked at all, she had an agenda to write a negative piece for her paper and she did it.
God has given Vanita Comissiong and her friends something special, and any fool can see that just by visiting the On The Wall Gallery website. A Google search reveals that Comissiong’s paintings are for sale in galleries around the world – even as far away as Japan – and the same is true for many of the other featured artists.
Have a look at the On The Wall Gallery’s paintings, and you will know that The New York Post article is just so much agenda-driven trash.
Troubled
November 9, 2006
Why not take the criticism with a grain of salt – and if you are compelled to respond, do so with style!. The counter attack on what appeard to be an obnoxious american on a free dinner pass really prompted alot panic an fear of a few, maybe she hit too close to home?
One Who Knows
November 9, 2006
Troubled – the restaurant critic saw nothing good about bajan art. maybe you want to side with her?
BFP states the obvious and it needed to be said after the NY post writer trashed all bajan art.
Ray
May 9, 2009
I realize that this post is a few years old, but I have strong feelings about this subject so am leaving this reply any way.
Firstly, I’m a Barbadian and I have an art degree, taken in London, UK.
The idea that ‘art’ is just a matter of taste, therefore implying that all art is of equal merit, is, quite simply, rubbish – a very postmodern ideal that left us with some horrid architecture.
Some ‘art’ IS more important than others.
Art is a language, be it literature, music, theatre, film et al. The more educated (on a global scale) a person is about the subject, the more sophisticated will be their expectations.
How can you compare Harry Potter to Alice in wonderland, Daniel steel to Flaubert, Jill Walker (the Barbadian) to giacometti, the films of Lars Von Trier or Ingmar Bergman with James Bond. There is art with a small ‘a’ and art with an ‘A’. The A’s are always either: provocative, nuanced, transcendental (of flesh and culture), disturbing, intellectual, maverick or rebellious, to list but a few – things that make you think, that push the limits. Barbados is a conservative country; there is no market for art of this caliber. As advanced as Barbados is in comparison to other Caribbean islands, culturally it is unsophisticated. In Barbados, value is monetary based, not intellectually; probably arising from the fact that Barbados relies on tourism (a form of prostitution) for sustenance – prettiness is promoted over substance. This is called decoration, or just plain entertainment, not Art. I don’t know of a single art piece by a Barbadian that is in any of the world’s major art galleries. This is not some sort of racism, since there are many African artists who do have pieces in these galleries, but they are not folk artists and do push the limits.
Some years back, I went to an exhibition at the Barbados consulate in London. The Barbadian Ambassador wanted to ban one of the paintings because it depicted a woman giving birth. It was a very innocuous piece of folk art that would in no way have stood up to international standards. Imagine what his reaction would have been like if it was an Andy Warhol piece depicting people injecting heroin, or some other provocative artist. I found the Ambassador’s reaction embarrassing. European representatives and politicians must have a good laugh about his naivety and ignorance behind his back: oh, listen to the small island mind. As a representative of Barbados, it should be mandatory that he be culturally aware! And not be living in some cloud of Victorian values that were invented by the English. The same English who have long disposed of those values.
Any Barbadian artist who has serious things to say will leave the island, no doubt for a more cutting edge city where audience expectations are higher, where people aren’t so easily shocked, if they are at all shockable, that is.
Sargeant
May 10, 2009
Uh Oh …. Here come the Sharks in formaldehyde as great art crowd again to teach us poor islanders a thing or two
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/art-of-making-money-how-does-a-dead-fish-sell-for-16312m-and-whos-writing-all-the-cheques-769504.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Physical_Impossibility_of_Death_in_the_Mind_of_Someone_Living
Ray
May 11, 2009
That’s where you’re wrong. I’m no fan of Damien Hurst. He is a con. Selling ‘art’ to people who know nothing about art. Again, big bucks looking to invest.Try picking on someone less populist. Speaking of him is like quoting Freud.
Ray
May 12, 2009
To be fair, I should really explain why I dislike Damien Hurst’s work.
As I said, art should push limits and break boundaries. Irony can be one of the most effective tools for achieving this. Irony can be wonderfully subversive – Oscar Wilde being the most famous example. But the way that Hurst uses irony creates boundaries. He plays with ‘in jokes’ to such an extent that only the initiated will understand.
But, upon having said that, I do realise that when Hurst first came on to the scene (late 80’s), there was a stagnation in the art world, especially in Britain, and it needed a shake up, in much the same way that Punk revitalised the scene in the late 70’s. But now, as is so often the case with any enfant terrible, the art world has moved on and it is Hurst who is stagnant. Hurst is no longer an artist, but a marketer. And I think he would agree. He did say that he wanted to reach a point where he could make really bad art and get away with. So that tells you a lot about the multi-millionaires who are investing in his work now. It is in this respect that he is subversive; the idiots who buy his work don’t realise that he is mocking them. They’re too blinded by their quest for prestige. But… their investment will pay off. The pieces will take on a life of their own and other wealthy idiots will pay even more for them when resold. It’s very much like those anti-racist films that attempted to show the stupidity of the skinhead movement. Who were these film’s most diehard fans? The same stupid skinheads that were too stupid to see that the films were portraying them as stupid.
If you look at some of Hurst’s earlier work, not the pieces that make it into the tabloids, you will see there is certain genius there. But he has chosen the route of a cynic instead.
This is why when you hear someone say, oh my five year old could do that, you know they are speaking from ignorance. They know nothing of the background, the history, the evolution that led to that point. No artist sits and says I’ll flick some paint on a canvas (Jackson Pollock) and just call it art. An awful lot has led to that thought of flicking paint on canvas. And in Pollock’s case, every flick was controlled and intentional, and filled with meaning (feeling).
Any how, I felt I needed to explain more fully my view on Hurst, since he was used as an (bad) example. He’s as mainstream as they come. I’m sure I’m wasting my breath. Like I said, it’s a language, and if someone cannot speak that language and is unwilling to learn it, then it will always sound (look like) gobbledygook. Art does not just decorate, it requires an active role from the viewer: thought, research and questioning.
See entire discussion on:
http://barbadosfreepress.wordpress.com/2006/11/09/beautiful-barbados-art-vanita-comissiong-and-friends/
The 2009 Navazoe Collection - inspired by the beautiful flora of Barbados - is made of West Indian Sea Island cotton and silk screen-printed with a colourful frangipani motif, specifically designed for this collection. 
