Gillian Forrester
Gillian Forrester is Curator of Print and Drawings at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven.
Forrester, Gillian
Forrester, Gillian
United States of America
Subscribed to the newsletter
Send me site notifications emails
Description: Art and Emancipation in Jamaica: Isaac Mendes Belisario and His Worlds
Stuart Hall has observed that the Caribbean “is a place where nobody is, in the obvious sense, ‘at home,’ where everybody is to some extent dislocated, and that sense of being ‘not at home,’ or...
PublisherYale Center for British Art
Related print edition pages: pp.65-85
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00018.008
Description: Art and Emancipation in Jamaica: Isaac Mendes Belisario and His Worlds
At the core of this book—physically and intellectually—lie twelve hand-colored lithographs, published under the title Sketches of Character, In Illustration of the Habits, Occupation, and Costume of the Negro Population in the Island of Jamaica. They were created by Isaac Mendes Belisario in Kingston, Jamaica, in late 1837 and early 1838. Small in size, and printed on fragile...
PublisherYale Center for British Art
Related print edition pages: pp.1-6
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00018.004
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