From colonialism to post modernism, Jamaica's art movement has been integrally linked to events and styles elsewhere. So an appraisal of Jamaican art from 1922 to the present provides an understanding of the socio-political history of our own culture as well as that of others. That means it is difficult to speak about Jamaican art without also considering European art and its conventional styles such as impressionism, post impressionism, cubism, expressionism. in addition, we need to also acknowledge  influences from Africa and the wider black diaspora. 

As Black-British curator, Eddie Chambers, of Jamaican parentage, noted: "For black people, 'history' refuses to be a lifeless and dull conglomeration of boring dates and events. Instead, it presents itself as earlier episodes of a current existence. We are the latest chapters of our current existence, and as such, we are scarcely able to deny or downgrade its centrality and its importance in our lives. Similarly, 'identity' has an urgency and a relevance which is literally worlds away from the ...individualism which many ... people take it to be.'' 

Jamaica's art history is a narrative that traverses continents and centuries beginning with the Taino Indians who gave Jamaica its indigenous culture but were almost all wiped out by diseases  during the colonial period. Few artifacts remain as evidence of the Amerindian culture however the National Gallery of Jamaica has salvaged a small collection of domestic items and carved icons (Zemes) that represented their Gods.

From the 17th century, European colonisers recognised the value of islands like Jamaica and within decades established settlements and plantations to provide for the European market goods such as sugar, rum, tobacco and spices. In time, as these areas of production expanded, it became necessary to import labour. Jamaica was peopled by indentured labourers from East India and China and Europe, then later in greater numbers, by Africans supplied through the slave trade. The Portuguese, Spanish, French, and British all vied for economic and political supremacy in the West Indies. But it was the British who eventually maintained colonial rule of Jamaica. With the formalising of this relationship came Crown, Christianity and Colonisation, three C's that ensured that an essentially alien imported peoples would be assimilated into British citizenship as much through psychological, as physical force.

This potted history would suggest that Jamaica, because of all its historical vagaries, might be considered one of the earliest forms of a post-modern plural society, bringing together its melange of Taino Indian, Spanish, French, East Indian, Chinese, African, British, and later Lebanese communities. But the slave trade eventually made Jamaica a predominantly black society. More than 90% of the present day population are of African descent. The remaining percentile are some of the wealthiest and most visible members of the society.  It is they who held power and, historically, it was they who painted.

When Edna Manley, (frequently referred to as the "mother of Jamaican art"), first arrived in Jamaica in 1922, she challenged the local art community when she publically criticised their work as "anaemic" and "imitative". She may have been right, of course, since much of what was exhibited showed a preoccupation with European styled landscape paintings and portraiture using traditional techniques that didn't reflect Jamaica's culture or its people. Black people were rarely depicted other than in a documentary, ethnographic sense. Artists in Jamaica then seemed little concerned with the modern movements in Europe that were already exploiting so called "primitive" cultures for inspiration.

Ironically, Edna Manley was of mixed race and raised in Britain. Returning to Jamaica she joined a movement to change the local artists perception of self and racial identity. Coming from Europe and having attended St Martin's in London, she was no doubt aware of the influence "primitivism" then held over modern art. As a young sculptor she had also begun to include forms in her work that echoed Henry Moore and other modernist tendencies. Whether her call for an appreciation of Jamaica's africanicity came from influences she brought with her, or from the stimulus she felt as part of a new creole community, her efforts to shift the focus of Jamaican art were revolutionary.