BlackColour.jpgIn Black as Colour, Dr. David Boxer aptly shows the importance of black to the Jamaican artist's palette. His iconographic perspective brings to the National Gallery of Jamaica an exhibition of enormous scope. This lecture lends to his vision a social context for the artistic use of black. With an art historical view, I hope to unify many of his ideas under the single theme of race. Jamaicans share with others a racialised response to colour inherited from colonialism. Our lives, and particularly our artists, are constantly engaged with the colour and its historical and symbolic significance whether we are asserting, denying, embracing or ignoring it. It is evident in images of black sexuality downstairs, black death in the lobby, black politics in the temporary gallery, or black religion on the mezzanine.(Throne for Justice, Sentinel, Flight from Egypt, Judgement)

Expanding themes already introduced in the exhibition, let's begin by considering how European ideas about the colour black shape our language, visual expression, and imagination. Then, exploring history and more specifically, Jamaican art history, we can examine the significance of black as a political and racial statement looking at artists who use the colour black as an affirmation of race. How black came to be an adjective of derision, how attitudes to colour were communicated under colonialism, how Marcus Garvey's advocacy of the Negro redefined the colour black, the impact of black power and rastafarian philosophies on later generations of artists, and the use of black in contemporary Jamaican art can all be considered. Finally, this lecture suggests that our artists today cannot avoid the significance of black as an indicator of race.

In his introductory essay David Boxer has written:

"... This exhibition [examines] a wide array of works which utilize black in a variety of ways (...) Black as signifier of night, night suggesting the unknown; night equated with the pleasures of sex; black as mystery; black as symbol of the consciousness; black as signifier of death...black as the colour of mourning; black as the colour of the abyss, of nothingness; black as the colour of Satan and evil; black as the colour of God and good, black as part of the Ancestral home, Africa; black as racial signifier; black as a part of the Jamaican tricolour; black as dread; black as the colour of oppression, yes, black as strength; black as the colour of love...and simply as a colour, or signifier of form."

This passage eloquently describes the contents of the exhibition and defines the curatorial approach. In his writing, Dr. Boxer takes us thematically from dark into light, from our more negative perceptions of the colour black as dark, sinful, sexual, satanic and mournful to more positive abstract associations with God, race pride, dignity, love. And if we view the exhibition as a journey through history, we find similar transitions, where we move from primal and negative responses to the colour to contemporary enlightened views where black is beautiful. That sense of progression is inherent in much of our thinking. We unwittingly assume that to move from ignorance to knowledge means we have been "enlightened." Even black people consider someone dark if they are ignorant or bright if knowledgeable.

The reason we think in this linear and hierarchical fashion is rooted in the "dark ages" of western history and related to primitive man's fear of the dark and difference. By the "middle ages" these fears were translated into real terms like, black magic- the magic practiced by conjurers and witches, black- bile a middle age malady of the spleen creating melancholy, a blackguard - an unscrupulous foul mouthed person, and blackamoor-a dark-skinned person or Negro. These negatives were further rationalised and absorbed into Western thinking after the enlightenment.

 When Europe encountered blacks and their carvings they considered them as fetishes. Both the black image whether real or represented in carving, signified racial difference, magic and mystery. Negro is the Spanish and Portuguese word for black. Europeans called the art they found in Africa l'art negre, feitico, or in West African pidgin fetisso. That term meaning fetish was used generally to describe any carving, it was more specifically applied to metal and nail covered wooden figures from central and western Africa created by the Kongo people. These objects were essentially medicine containers, and their contents used for healing, protecting, punishing or divining, and usually administered by a local priest or doctor to the individual or community. The authorities banned the use of such carvings under slavery and severely punished their adherents. Those who knew how to create such objects and had the medical knowledge that empowered them went underground or disguised them in Christian forms now recognised in Obeah, Santeria and Voodoo.

As understood by Europeans, fetishism was born in the "cross cultural spaces" created by trade between Europe and Africa. Feitico referred to the art and rituals that the Portuguese encountered and interpreted in their own language. As such, ideas about fetishism held no significance in the traditions of central or western Africa, but gained local currency and meaning through exchange with Europeans. There is even a suggestion that nkisi nail "fetishes" came from crucifixion images given to the Kongo peoples by European missionaries. Research also shows that superstitions surrounding these objects more reflect European medieval occult practices and witchcraft than beliefs held in Africa. Blacks in the Americas inherited Europe's fear of the dark and effectively a fear of themselves, the colour of their skin, the black image in the mirror, on canvas or in carving.

(Parody 1896) In the 17th century, the image of the black became a popular addition to European painting. The black image suggested everything that was unknown, threatening or different. The inclusion of black people in paintings summarised all the subliminal fears and phobias that threatened western society. This erroneous symbolism linked "blackness" with sin; death; ignorance; sexual deviancy; virility; fecundity; traits that validated "whiteness" as pure, chastened and enlightened. The slave trade also did much to denigrate European perceptions of blacks, transforming them from docile curiosities into the barbaric and the violent. The image of the black then became a coverall for any element of disaffection in bourgeois society striving to establish norms of civilised behaviour. Freaks of nature, nonconformists, and the female nude were tarred with the same brush, often with their "otherness" being underscored and projected by merely placing them in the same physical or mental space as the black.