Word: haitians
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...basement room of a Third Avenue gallery last week hung the second Manhattan exhibition of contemporary Haitian art. Done by houseboys, chauffeurs and voodoo drummers in their spare time, the paintings were as uninhibited as they were crude. Their bright automobile-enamel colors and outlandish but occasionally forceful draftsmanship looked good to many a critic, for they made a pleasant and refreshing contrast with the alfalfa-dry fare ground out by most professional moderns. "These fellows," said one enthusiastic gallerygoer, "paint as a cock crows...
...Haitian primitives had some extraordinary subject matter to draw on-tropical market places, voodoo rites and deities, scenes from the black nation's bloody history. But the most effective pictures in last week's show were those that made no effort to be beautiful and that sacrificed the esoteric for the immediate. Préfète Dufaut's childlike Harbor at Jacmel was as flat, bright and familiar as any postcard, and Wilson Bigaud's self-portrait behind bars had the harshness of a flashbulb photo. Even these, standouts though they were, lacked most...
Since Schmiedigen flew down from New York last November to build the Haitians a $6,000,000 fair, he has lost 30 Ibs. As soon as he began the job, which has to be finished in time for Port-au-Prince's sooth anniversary in December, he discovered that there were practically no skilled workers in the country. He has had to train electricians, plumbers, welders, drillers, mechanics. He has personally supervised carpenters and masons, all of whom were imbued to a man with the Haitian aversion to straight lines and square corners...
...tourists expected by plane and ship, Schmiedigen was packing in all the Haitian color he could get. Staff artists sculptured likenesses of Haitian beauties, chipped out brilliantly colored linoleum murals recording Haitian history from Toussaint 1'Ouverture to President Dumarsais Estimé. A good third of the grounds was marked as the special Haitian sector. Here earringed women would sell mahogany and wicker, while in a small nearby stadium other Haitians would drum, dance and stage cockfights...
...workers, singing as they hammered, spoke of it affectionately as "ti exposition pa'nous" (our little fair). The impresario, a veteran of world's fairs in Paris (1938) and New York (1939), was pleased too. "But," he said, "I've given up hoping that a Haitian worker will ever learn to feel when a line is parallel to another line...