Barbaro Martinez-Ruiz
Barbaro Martinez-Ruiz is Tanner-Opperman Chair of African Art History in Honor of Roy Sieber in the Department of Art History, Indiana University, Bloomington.
Martinez-Ruiz, Barbaro
Martinez-Ruiz, Barbaro
United States of America
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Description: Art and Emancipation in Jamaica: Isaac Mendes Belisario and His Worlds
Just as the Caribbean itself is an intricate layering of cultures that continually migrate and merge, the region’s art is a dynamic and constantly changing force—adapting to, responding to, and interacting with lived experience. An examination of regional artistic practice across a range of media highlights the role of religion in providing artists all over the Caribbean with access to...
PublisherYale Center for British Art
Related print edition pages: pp.103-117
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00018.010
Description: Art and Emancipation in Jamaica: Isaac Mendes Belisario and His Worlds
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00018
Coinciding with the bicentenary of the abolition of the British slave trade, this multi-disciplinary volume chronicles the iconography of sugar, slavery, and the topography of Jamaica from the beginning of British rule in 1655 to the aftermath of emancipation in the 1840s. Focusing on the visual and material culture of slavery and emancipation in Jamaica, it offers new perspectives on art, music, and performance in Afro-Jamaican society and on the Jewish diaspora in the Caribbean. Central to the book is Sketches of Character (1837–38)—a remarkable series of lithographs by the Jewish Jamaican artist Isaac Mendes Belisario—the earliest visual representation of the masquerade form Jonkonnu. Innovative scholarship traces the West African roots of Jonkonnu through its evolution in Jamaica and continuing transformation today; offers a unique portrait of Jamaican culture at a pivotal historical moment; and provides a new model for interpreting the visual culture of empire.
Print publication date December 2007 (out of print)
Print ISBN 9780300116618
EISBN 9780300248067
Illustrations 440
Print Status out of print