#Sexypink/Mark King | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

sexypinkon · 2 years ago

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Sexypink - In Bereavement - Thank you Rubadiri Victor for permission to reprint your recollections in text and image of a talent gone so soon.

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Rest in Perfect Peace Mark Akini Nottingham. My Deepest Condolences go out to his Family & Closest Friends- especially to a brother-in-arms like Arnold Goindhan... It is distressful when it is someone so young & still so full of Promise... Mark was an enormously creative soul, with a grand appetite for Life & Creative possibility. When a number of us sparked the underground creative movements of the 1990s, Mark and a cohort of his peers from the St Joseph Valley emerged as the next Rapso young guns- Black Lyrics.

They were the face of the Rapso generation right after the Kindred generation. They in fact have a pretty good album of young Teen Rapso that has never been released. This may be a great time to bless it with air... The group of four escaped the limitations of their valley home and 'Pinny' and Mark especially descended into the sometimes viper-pit that could be Trini and Port of Spain theatre (lol).

They actually broke the mold and did excellently for themselves, becoming steadfast working actors and creators- probably the hardest working theatre men of their generation... Mark was a member of my troupe of actors in my company- the WIRE BEND Folklore Theatre.

They were the first people I called when I formed it in 2015. I owe him, Pinny, Renee Michelle King, Nicole Wong Chong, Karina Andrews 'Arlette', Kurtis Gross, and others so much because they committed to be the vehicles for me to tell my stories, and have done so since. Mark and Pinny in particular have been fearless in disappearing into roles and collaborating with my madness. Not every actor can act well in full body costumes and puppets- fewer can manage 7 complex costume changes, whilst nailing all the respective characters per play. Dragons, Imps, Lions, Wolves, Old Men, Children, African Kings,- Mark never hesitated to wrestle with the role and render it. He was especially my go-to to play 'The Boy'- that recurring immortal archetype of the mythical innocent young male.

He did not need to act it- he was very much the Boy. Apart from his fresh-facedness he had that openess, curiousity, and appetite for life. He also had the naughtiness of the Boy too... Because of this and his wit, he also was my choice to portray my version of the traditional Anansi... He nailed it...He and Pinny, like many of us who choose this life, have a profound connection to 'the Child inside' and for the sacredness and essentialness of Play. So Mark was playful as he embodied those essential archetypes- and also as he moved through life.

He was a committed Teacher, Actor, and Rapso-man. He was moving into being a full multi-media titan embracing film/video and more- especially dedicated to the disenfranchised Boys of the Street- the Zess generation. He wanted to record their songs and tell their stories in film (one of the other things about Mark is that he got things done). I think he understood how profoundly the Arts expanded his life from being an urban village boy from the St Joseph Valley with ceilings on his expectations.

He wanted to repeat that emancipation for others...Mark- though young- was very much a family MAN. He had a relatively large-ish family and was an excellent father to his kids, who he adored. My heart goes out to them... Too young. This one. Too young. A lot of good ones are going.

We can only hope it is as Stalin said, ''MORE COME...''We will dedicate the 2023 Season of Wire Bend in April to him. Rest in Peace, Young Brother...

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sexypinkon · 7 years ago

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Isaac Mendes Belisario (1795-1849)

Isaac Mendes Belisario was the first documented Jamaican-born artist. He was active in Kingston around Emancipation and his work, in paint and in print, provides a rich document of life in Jamaica, seen from the perspective of the Sephardic merchant class to which he belonged. Belisario’s work is well represented in the NGJ Collection and on permanent view in our historical galleries. The following overview of his life and work is adapted from the catalogue of “Isaac Mendes Belisario: Art & Emancipation in Jamaica” (2008).

I.M. Belisario, Cocoa Walk Estate (c1840), Collection: National Gallery of Jamaica

Biography

Isaac Mendes Belisario was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1795 into a Sephardic Jewish family of Spanish or Portuguese origin. The family had close ties to the Sephardic community in London. His grandfather, Isaac Mendes Belisario, after whom he was named, taught children at the Bevis Marks synagogue in London. The older Isaac’s son Abraham was sent to Jamaica in 1786 to work for Alexandre Lindo, a wealthy merchant, plantation owner, and slave factor. Five years later Abraham married Alexandre’s daughter Esther, and in 1803 Abraham, Esther and their six children – the younger Isaac, Caroline, Lydia, Hannah, Rose and Maria – moved to London.

Belisario trained as an artist under Robert Hills, the landscape watercolourist and drawing master. He exhibited landscapes between 1815 and 1818 but put aside his artistic endeavours in the 1820s, when he worked as a stockbroker. In 1831 Belisario showed a portrait at the Royal Academy of Arts, London.

Belisario returned to Kingston in about 1832 and remained there for at least fifteen years. The island had a significant Jewish population in the 1830s, concentrated in Kingston and Spanish Town, and the majority worked in retailing, merchandising, and wholesaling. Belisario may have felt encouraged to return by the Jamaica Assembly’s passing in 1831 of the Jewish Emancipation Act, which gave Jamaican Jews full civil liberties at a time when the rights of Jews in Britain were still being negotiated.

The few works that survive from this period in Belisario’s career show him to have been a versatile artist, capable of working in different media and in a range of genres to cater to his clientele’s demands. In addition to his portrait practice, which was based oat 21 King Street, in downtown Kingston, Belisario painted estate portraits in oils and collaborated with the French printmaker Adolphe Duperly on various print projects. In 1837-1838 Belisario produced his best-known work, Sketches of Character, a series of twelve handcoloured lithographs, which may reflect his desire to produce work of wider appeal and more lasting significance.

The Jamaica to which Belisario returned was on the eve of making its troubled transition from apprenticeship to full emancipation, and his works provide a fascinating portrait of a colony undergoing – and resisting – radical transformation. He did not publicize his personal views, however, perhaps out of concern not to alienate his clients and community.

Belisario’s last documented Kingston work is a lithograph of 1846, and he died in London in 1849.

I.M. Belisario, Sketches of Character: French Set Girls (1837-38), Collection: The Hon. Maurice Facey and Mrs. Facey (On extended loan to the NGJ)

Sketches of Character

In September 1837, Belisario published the first part of a series of lithographic prints entitled Sketches of Character, In Illustration of the Habits, Occupation, and Costume of the Negro Population in the Island of Jamaica. The first part consisted of four hand-coloured lithographs accompanied by an extensive explanatory text, known as letterpress. The series was sold by subscription, and Belisario printed a list of subscribers with the first part. Two more parts followed over the next few months, but despite Belisario’s intention that there should be twelve parts in all, he abandoned the series after the third part of was issued in 1838, likely having exhausted either his financial or creative resources, or both.

Of the twelve published plates, seven are images of figures from the masquerades that the formerly enslaved performed in Jamaica during the annual Christmas and New Year’s holidays, and four depict examples of the different occupations frequently seen in the streets of Kingston. Belisario described these two groups of images as the “Christmas Amusements” and the “Cries of Kingston.” Belisario’s prints were the first visual representations both of the masquerades and of Jamaican occupational types, and Sketches of Character was a landmark event for both Jamaican and British print publishing.

The Christmas Amusements depict three separate, though overlapping, performance forms: the Sets, the Actor Boys, and Jonkonnu (usually referred to by whites during the colonial period in its anglicized form of John Canoe). Originating in African masquerade and religious practice, these forms underwent a process of creolization, incorporating elements of European theater and masquerade imported to Jamaica by immigrants. Masquerade was a controlled outlet for the enslaved, who endured an everyday existence of grinding monotony and brutality. The notion of the “world turned upside down,” parody, and masking are central to masquerade, raising troubling questions regarding social hierarchies, power relations, and personal identity, and the holiday period was a time of anxiety for planters and ruling elites, who feared that carnival would spill over into violence and revolt. There were, in fact, active efforts to suppress Jonkonnu in the post-emancipation period and it is only in the mid 20th century that this masquerade tradition was recognized as a legitimate part of Jamaica’s cultural heritage.

The series has had an important legacy. Belisario’s images were models for the revival of Jonkonnu in the 1950s, and they also played a role in the creation of a new national identity in the post-independence era.

I.M. Belisario, Skethces of Character: Jaw-Bone or House John-Canoe (1837-1838), Collection: The Hon. Maurice Facey and Mrs. Facey (On extended loan to the NGJ)

Belisario as a Landscape Painter

Belisario is remembered mainly as a watercolourist and lithographer, but he was also active as a landscape painter in oils whose works chronicle Jamaican plantation life and labour at a moment of profound transformation. He was perhaps the last exponent of the picturesque estate landscape in Jamaica.

A group of oil paintings and a related watercolour, all depicting estates belonging to the Marquess of Sligo (then Governor of Jamaica), explores the question of labour on the plantation in the transition from apprenticeship to freedom. They might specifically represent the estates under the management of Alexandre Bravo, who took them over as a manager in 1838.

Belisario’s paintings seem to offer an idyllic vision of free labour willingly performed in an open market, resulting in economic prosperity and social calm – the desired outcome of Sligo’s reforms. Other sources however record that the years after full emancipation saw the collapse of sugar production and agriculture on marginal lands such as Sligo’s plantations at Cocoa Walk and Kelly’s Estate. Only with the breaking up of the estates in a “ruinate” condition did the former apprentices finally have a chance to purchase and cultivate their own land.

Bibliography

Barringer, Tim, Gillian Forrester, and Barbaro Martinez-Ruiz, eds. Art and Emancipation in Jamaica: Isaac Mendes Belisario and His Worlds. New Haven: Yale Center for British Art & Yale University Press, 2007.

Boxer, David et al. Isaac Mendes Belisario: Art & Emancipation in Jamaica. Kingston: National Gallery of Jamaica, 2008.

Ranston, Jackie. Belisario: Sketches of Character. Kingston: Mill Press, 2008.

Sexypink addendum: The work of this Artist has always interested me, along with the work of Cazabon, for its period.

#National Gallery of Jamaica Blog #Isaac Mendez Belisario #Jamaican Art History #Jamaican Artist Isaac Mendes Belisario #Historical Art in Jamaica #Spanish/Portuguese heritage in Jamaica #Jonkonnu Festival in Art #The Art of Jonkonnu

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