#tumblr/cazabon books

[galleryyuhself]

Sexypink - A huge loss to Trinidad and Tobago. Thank you Geoffrey for your vision, kindness and love.

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Geoffrey's contribution to Art history. He was the definitive writer on Cazabon.

An image of one of Cazabon's paintings.

Finally, a beautiful tribute to Geoffrey MacLean from one of many friends.

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TRIBUTE TO GEOFFREY MACLEAN. In each island nation of the Eastern Caribbean, economies of scale make it so that there are only one or two (and if they are lucky, three or four) local experts in some field of study which has little to do with industry or clerical work but everything to do with the national character and its history. Because they are often without precedent, these experts often have had to travel abroad for their training or are otherwise self-trained in their chosen sector of the liberal arts/humanities/social sciences.

Trained architect and avocational art historian Geoffrey MacLean was one of these indispensable sages in the field of visual studies and the built environment. He was the world’s foremost specialist on nineteenth-century landscape and genre painter Michel Jean Cazabon. Cazabon was a partially unwitting member of a global late colonial/early post-colonial landscape painting tradition that encompassed artists such as Mexican José María Velasco, the Chartrand brothers of Cuba, Filipino painter Fernando Amorsolo, and the painters of the Hudson River School in the United States. What all of these artists had in common was their urgent need to capture and pay tribute for posterity to the natural beauty of their respective lands before that “Edenic” verdure was despoiled by then-already encroaching industrialization.

MacLean’s passion for Cazabon pressed him not only to hone further the scholastic abilities he had already developed at Presentation College in his native Trinidad and Bristol University in the U.K. but to travel back and forth between the Caribbean and Europe hunting down examples and collections of Cazabon’s work. He also assisted the government of the Republic of Trinidad & Tobago in the acquisition of some Cazabon works for display in its National Museum and Art Gallery.

MacLean was generous with his knowledge, his time, and with his published materials. Every time I visited him, I came home with an armful of books and catalogues (one of my favorites is an unassuming little pamphlet of a catalogue called Chinese Artists of Trinidad & Tobago which probably played some part in my decision to write the book about Sybil Atteck on which I am currently working with Sybil’s nephew Keith). In graduate school, I relied heavily on MacLean’s Cazabon books for the research I was doing on colonial Latin American and Caribbean painting. MacLean’s enthusiasm for Cazabon’s genre painting, especially his rapt verbal and written descriptions of the late 19th century painting Negress in Gala Dress (pictured here) revealed to me that Cazabon’s paintings of local “types” (e.g., “Negress” instead of named individual) was sometimes a form of real portraiture and thus departed the tipo de país-to-costumbrismo continuum that we sometimes use in Latin American art history. Cazabon loved his people too much and included too much implied biography and other narratives in those paintings, to reduce their subjects to mere “types.” His titles were thus deceptively taxonomic.

Architect, scholar, art gallery director Geoffrey MacLean’s contribution to the study and preservation of T&T’s architecture was legendary even before his passing. He has searched out original plans for fretwork houses and saved some of these architectural jewels from the bulldozers of “developers.” He has done the same for members of the Magnificent Seven around the Queen’s Park Savannah and taught workshops on both the civic and residential architecture of Trinidad & Tobago. As MacLean himself now passes into legend, we are left with the perennial question in these small and mid-sized islands of the Eastern Caribbean each with their two or three experts on local art and architecture – who will pick up the torch?

~ Lawrence Waldron

[mistavybe]

Favourites

I wasn’t Tagged by anyone but it looked like fun soooo… 🤷🏾‍♂️

Cookie: Chocolate Chocolate-Chunk

Artist: LeRoy Clarke and Michel-Jean Cazabon

Food: Lasagna, pizza, Trini KFC, BBQ ribs, chocolate anything

Movie: The Fifth Element

Show: Currently - Scandal, Of All Time - Star Trek, The Next Generation

Instrument to play: Voice. Singing is my everything.

Social media platform: I'm def the most human and interactive for real on Tumblr. It holds a special place in my heart. I've recently rediscovered an appreciation for Twitter though, thanks to my "secret" woke blerd-ish account lol.

Animals: dogs, whales & dolphins

Color: Purple

Books: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, Hidden Figures by Margot Shetterly

Hobby: TV, movies, comics, books and the internet. Also music and overthinking things 😳

School Subject: English Language, Creative Writing & Music

Flower: Red rose

Fictional characters: King T'Challa / Black Panther from Marvel Comics, Luke Cage from the Marvel/Netflix TV series, Kingpin & The Punisher from Marvel/Netflix’s Daredevil, Eli Pope (AKA "Papa Pope") from Scandal, all the main characters on Atlanta, Donna from Suits, Alexander L’Hiboux (AKA The Owl) from the Robert Forward novels, all of the Clone Club from Orphan Black, Damian Wayne / Robin from DC’s animated universe.

 I tag @notyourlonewolf @antarcticabysea @manekou @ropeandcoffee @soulsistrin @dogwithsharperteeth @sheeeenabobeeeena @julierthanyou @lyndatia @nabyss @thepinkcornmoon @apricotica and @bubbles-burst.