Paradise as an Ecological Proposal

Dr. LeGrace Benson of the Arts of Haiti Project

Paradise as an Ecological Proposal

From the mid-twentieth century to the present, Haitian painters have created landscapes that seem on the surface to have only an ironic relationship with the actualities of their increasingly deforested, eroded country. The tropical beauty of the works could be dismissed as superficial tourist art, colorful blandishments for visitors from the pale north countries to take a piece of the colorful warmth back home. But closer attention to the themes and their details leads to revelations of attitudes of realistic distress coupled with directional signals of hope. This presentation includes a selection of Haitian paintings and sculptures from 1950 to 2007.