Medcin Fèy and Postmodernism: The Root of the Rituals

Introduction language of Caribbean artist does not originate in obsession with celebrating his inner self; this inner self is inseparable from future evolution of his community. But what artist expresses, reveals, and argues in his work, people have not ceased to live in reality ___ [T]he artist acquires a capacity to reactivate. . . . Art for us has no sense of division of genres. This conscious research creates possibility of a collective effervescence. If he more or less succeeds, he makes critical thought possible; if he succeeds completely, he can inspire.1 Art museums and galleries typically portray a limited experience of to public consumer. Paintings and sculptures are primary media that collectors gather and present, and these paintings and sculptures were made primarily by academically trained artists. In West, these academies are usually based on post-Renaissance European traditions. However, postmodern theories have expanded artistic tradition to include other media that is not necessarily housed, or preserved, within walls. With roots in Dada and Abstract Expressionism, performance and temporary installations (including earthworks) have also been included in list of possibilities of visual experiences. Performances and installations are necessarily temporal in nature, impossible to duplicate, and highly dependent upon results of artist's movements through space. Therefore, these kinds of artistic expressions are so time- and space-specific that if audience is not present to observe process, s/he misses product. Similarly, outside Western (hemi)sphere, art's rooted themes of myth and tradition deviate from classical idea of as history of creative spirits and timeless masterpieces.2 Individual innovation is not point. Reassuring and reissuing balance and harmony and tradition to community as a whole takes precedence over demonstration of individual will. Cultural values are transferred through time via special objects of exchange and ritual, songs and spoken stories.3 However, publications on in particular have not always adequately represented this difference. If a student of were to walk into a library searching for books on made in Haiti, s/he would encounter several histories of Haitian Renaissance and museum catalogues of exhibitions. However, as this essay will show, reading these books will probably not provide a complete picture of artistic process in Haiti because most discussions are limited to more traditionally accepted media, i.e., painting and sculpture, which can conveniently be transferred across Caribbean Sea to tell stories of experience in faraway lands, despite their inherently limited voice. Artistic Constructions Seiden Rodman attributes the miracle of art to DeWitt Peters, who arrived in Port-au-Prince in 1943 and opened Haiti's first Arts Center following year.4 Centre d'Art furnished supplies, instruction, and studio space in exchange for exotic paintings and sculptures that were sold to European and American collections.5 The primitives and their charming naivete appealed greatly to Western collectors who saw surreal perspectives and vivid color schemes in paintings, and forceful grace in shapes of iron sculptures.6 Searching for latent aspects of their own identity, Westerners embraced folk art of Haiti, importing, exhibiting, reproducing, selling, and ultimately owning mass quantities of portable and consumable creations.7 Part of value of these works and their artists lay in idea that they were untainted, pure, and estranged from familiar routines of complimentary colors, single-point perspective, and Christian symbolism found in much of Western art.8 For example, Rodman writes of Philome Obin's Western contact, Fortunately, however, his brief apprenticeship to a visiting French drawing master was so brief and took place so very long ago-probably when eighty-year-old artist was in his twenties- that no damage was done. …