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Tuesday, 16 February 2010 14:36 |
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Celebrated art of Haiti is buried under rubble
The earthquake that killed so many also demolished the island's galleries and destroyed thousands of paintings
Video : http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/15/haiti-earthquake-art-destroyed
Number 18 Rue Bouvreuil was once a mecca for lovers of Haitian art. Outside the Musee Galerie d'Art Nader, perched on a hillside overlooking Port-au-Prince, a sign greeted visitors. "On top of the town, top in the arts," it boasted. Inside, the walls were plastered with thousands of paintings recording nearly a century of Haitian history.
Now the three-storey art gallery is gone, reduced to a dusty heap of rubble and torn canvases. Broken picture frames from irreplaceable local masterpieces poke from the gallery's ruins.
"My dad has about 12,000 paintings here and we are trying to save what is left," said Georges Nader, the son of Haiti's best-known art collector and the owner of the gallery, as he scanned the debris. "We have only been able to save about 2,000 of them."
The human cost of Haiti's worst earthquake in more than 200 years – at least 150,000 lives lost – has been well documented. But the disaster also struck a knockout blow to the heart of Haiti's vibrant arts community.
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Tuesday, 16 February 2010 14:33 |
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Much of Haiti's cultural legacy is lost in the rubble. CNN's Christiane Amanpour reports.
http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/world/2010/02/14/amanpour.haiti.lost.art.cnn.html
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Friday, 29 January 2010 16:44 |
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By Moni Basu and Jessica Ravitz, CNN
January 29, 2010 9:38 a.m. EST
Port-au-Prince, Haiti (CNN) -- High in the hills above the Haitian capital, artist Levoy Exil paints at his terrace studio. The man who began a career using beets, carrots, tomatoes and black beans for paint creates vibrant abstractions of life and nature.
A year ago, he infused a celestial oil painting with hues of purplish red -- symbolizing blood -- after he gazed outward and for a moment the verdant landscape turned to black. He knew then that something bad was coming.
He saw the blood he had imagined on the streets of Port-au-Prince on January 12 when the earth heaved and 150,000 people perished.
It's now apparent that among the earthquake's widespread destruction were museums, galleries and other places that contained Haiti's artistic treasures, including Exil's work.
They were a troubled nation's legacy, a key source of economic trade with the rest of the world -- and undeniable symbols of hope.
Lost, perhaps, forever.
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Monday, 25 January 2010 23:57 |
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Vibrant Haitian art vanishes in the dust
Haiti has lost huge chunks of its artistic culture, with the destruction and damage of historic paintings and murals, along with the deaths of art collectors.
BY LESLEY CLARK
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PORT-AU-PRINCE -- The vibrant murals that once adorned the walls of the Cathedrale of Sainte Trinite -- created in the 1950s by some of the giants of Haitian art -- are now largely dust, part of the gray rubble that covers most everything in Port-au-Prince.
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