Stanley Greaves is without question one of the Caribbean's most
distinguished artists and this critical monograph is both a long overdue
investigation and appreciation of his work and an important contribution
to the still small body of Caribbean writing about art.
Roopnaraine's approach takes as its starting point Greaves' own
reference to 'the primacy of the eye as a means of defining fundamentals
of a Caribbean experience that cuts through or transcends the history of
colonialism'. Roopnaraine's is in the first place an exploration of
Stanley Greaves' highly original visual language, but one which draws
attention to the significance of Greaves' practice in bringing together
elements from visual resources that range across traditional African and
Amerindian art and contemporary European surrealism. Again, whilst this
is in the first place a description and analysis of the visual and the
importance for Greaves of the physical materials he works in,
Roopnaraine never loses sight of the fact that Greaves is a Guyanese
artist with explicit, though never overdetermining cultural and
political concerns.
Chapters explore the roots of Greaves' art in Guyanese physical reality
('If all other records of modern Guyanese life were to disappear, a
study of Greaves' paintings of compassion of the fifties and sixties
would be enough to tell us how we lived...'); his work in sculpture and
ceramics; the impact of his explorations of the bush of the Guyanese
interior and a move into more abstract spacial concerns; his return to
figure paintings and an extensive investigation of the folk resources of
Caribbean art; his visual response to the desolate years of political
dictatorship and social collapse in the Guyana of the 1980s in a more
explicitly 'readable' art; and the art of his more recent years of inner
exploration and what has been described as a Caribbean metaphysic.
The book is illustrated with 78 full colour images of Greaves'
paintings, sculptures and ceramics and black and white illustrations
from his notebooks.
Roopnaraine's monograph will be of major interest not only to those
concerned with Caribbean art, but to those with wider postcolonial
interests in the creolising process.
Rupert Roopnaraine was born in 1943 in Guyana. He is political
leader of the W.P.A., a film-maker, art critic and fomer cricketer.
