R.I.P. Milton George, 1939-2008

The National Gallery of Jamaica has issued an obituary of the Jamaican artist Milton George, who died on Monday 31 March:

Milton George (né George Oliver) was born in Asia, Manchester, in 1939 but lived in Kingston and Braeton for most of his life. While he attended part-time classes at what was then the Jamaica School of Art and Craft, he was in essence self-taught and developed a pictorial language which reflected his awareness of modernist expressionism but was uniquely his own. He was aptly described by Dr David Boxer, Chief Curator of the National Gallery, as “a born painter, who quickly understood the emotive power of line and colour when freed from the conventions of academia.”

George was indeed the ultimate expressionist, who freely used colour, paint application and imagery to appeal to the emotions and the senses. While he also commented on social and political issues -- perhaps most memorably in his hilarious The PM Speaks at 8 pm of 1987 -- most of his works were autobiographical and he often stated that all his paintings were self-portraits. Veerle Poupeye, Research Fellow and Curator at the Edna Manley College, wrote in 2007 that George’s “paintings convey feelings, moods and situations by means of an instinctive, poetic visual and verbal language -- and his titles are important -- that is not easily translated into rational terms but nonetheless speaks eloquently to those who are willing to listen. Milton's themes usually draw from his turbulent personal life but we can easily identify with what he is talking about: our most private and vulnerable moments, which are filled with tenderness or exhilaration but also with anxiety and aggression, and our bewilderment and impotence at the tragicomic spectacle of the private and public worlds we inhabit. In that sense his paintings are not only self-portraits but about all of us, about the human condition.”

George’s work evolved significantly over the years. In the 1970s, he was best known for his quiet, delicately coloured semi-abstract portrayals of women, although his Opening Night (1978), an irreverent send-up of the pretensions of the art world, revealed a more unruly, satirical eye that later came to dominate his work. By the early 1980s, George was at the peak of his artistic powers, with paintings and pastel drawings that expressed raging emotions, a wicked sense of humour and, in many instances, a raw sexuality. Some were hilariously funny, such as his Fourteen Pages from my Diary (1983), which depict the “battle of the sexes” in George’s own, rather turbulent private life, but even his most carnal and humorous images were always infused by a deep sense of anguish. His most haunting works dealt overtly with these anxieties, such as Journey (1984) and The Ascenscion (1993), two meditations on the subject of death. George had in recent years become less visibly present in the artistic community, because of lingering health problems, but continued working and exhibiting, among others in the National Biennial. In 2007, he had his last solo exhibition at the Mutual Gallery, in which he represented a new body of work in oil and watercolour paint, which exuded a gentle wariness that reminded of his work of the 1970s, thus bringing his work full circle.

George’s work has been widely exhibited in Jamaica and abroad, among others in Jamaican Art 1922-1982 (1983-86), which toured in the USA, Caribbean Art Now (1987), and New World Imagery (1995), which were shown in England, and has represented Jamaica in the Havana and Santo Domingo biennials. His awards include the Silver Musgrave Medal in 1987 and a gold medal at the 1994 Santo Domingo Biennial. His work is represented in major local and regional collections, such as the National of Jamaica, where his Opening Night is on permanent view, and the private collections of Wallace Campbell, David Boxer, Guy McIntosh and Herman van Asbroeck in Jamaica, and Mervyn Awon in Barbados. One of Milton’s children, Beverley Oliver, has recently also gained acclaim as a painter and shown her work at the National Gallery and Harmony Hall.

Milton George passed away on Monday, March 31. The National Gallery extends its condolences to his family and many friends.

The Old Guys

Much attention to the older generation of Caribbean writers in the British weekend press. In the Sunday Observer, Robert McCrum has a long feature on V.S.Naipaul. It doesn't add much light, or even heat, to the subject, but it does (as always) indicate that something is about to happen. That "something" is the publication in a couple of weeks of Patrick French's "authorised" biography of Naipaul, The World is What it Is (the opening sentence of A Bend in the River), followed shortly by a BBC4 television documentary on April 10, The Strange Luck of V.S. Naipaul. VS blithely tells his interviewer that he won't be reading the biography, and that maybe it's time to settle down a bit, "call it a day" — but apparently he's shortly off to Uganda to "research his next book", and then on to the Congo.

In the Sunday Times, Naipaul's first editor at Andre Deutsch, Diana Athill, recalls her long professional relationship with him — this took a whole fascinating chapter in her memoir Stet — and the phases she used to follow him through, from silence to excitement to disillusion and despair. She also recalls the agony she suffered when she had to tell him she couldn't stand Guerrillas (which still seems to me to be Naipaul's worst book).

In the Saturday Guardian Review, meanwhile, Hari Kunzru conjures up the Notting Hill once haunted by Sam Selvon's "lonely Londoners", and prowls through the follow-up novels about the legendary Moses. This seems to have been triggered by the reissue of Moses Ascending as a Penguin Modern Classic, due for reissue on March 27.

NBCC awards for Caribbean-American writers

Editor Nicholas Laughlin is on his travels again, but once he gets back I'm sure he will have something to say about two of the National Book Critics' Circle awards announced last week.

Junot Diaz, who was born in the Dominican Republic and moved to New York with his family as a child, won the fiction award for his debut novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

And Edwidge Danticat, who was born next door in Haiti and followed a similar migrant's path to the US, won the autobiography prize for her memoir Brother, I'm Dying.

Both books were on the CRB's list of the best books of 2007 announced in January.

R.I.P. Ralph de Boissiere, 6 October, 1907-16 February, 2008

Ralph de Boissiere--who died last Saturday, at the age of 100--lived the longer part of his life in Australia, almost as far as you can get from Trinidad without leaving the planet, but he never ceased to be Trinidadian. The proof is in his work, especially his best known novels, Crown Jewel and Rum and Coca-Cola, which portray Trinidad society in the 1930s and 40s with a vast historical scope and ambition very few West Indian writers have attempted.

Had de Boissiere's major novels not been published by a small Australian press in the 1950s, had they not languished in relative obscurity until the 1980s, he might have been a major influence on two generations of West Indian writers and substantially changed the direction of West Indian literature.

Even though his work was all but forgotten for so long, his place in West Indian literary history is secure. Along with Albert Gomes, Alfred Mendes, and C.L.R. James, de Boissiere was one of the chief figures in the Beacon group, a circle of young, talented, ambitious writers that formed around the Trinidadian magazine of that name in the early 1930s. Even then, among such liberal peers, de Boissiere stood out for his radical politics, and his socialism was always a motivating force in his writing.

In November 2007, the University of Trinidad and Tobago conferred an honorary degree on de Boissiere. In his citation, Kenneth Ramchand, associate provost of UTT, described him as "a man who overcame the biases of race and colour, a gifted writer who projected the power of the powerless, a visionary whose insight into the compassion and creativity of our men and women and of their potential to create a humane and just society has been unwavering throughout his hundred years."

Publishing an excerpt from de Boissiere's forthcoming autobiography in the CRB last year was one of the great honours of my time with the magazine. It pleases me immensely to think that he saw his prose in our pages just a few months before he died.

Kei Miller, "New Voice"

The British bookshop chain Waterstone's recently chose twelve writers for its "New Voices" campaign--see this article in The Bookseller for details.

"One of the most exciting things for readers every year is watching new writers appear on the literary scene and discovering their work," said Toby Bourne, fiction buying manager. "Our New Voices demonstrate a real wealth of talent and variety--a completely different collection of novels from all genres and from authors of different nationalities. These 12 authors have written fresh, challenging and convincing stories, and we expect to find them shaping the world of fiction for years to come."

The twelve writers and their new books will enjoy special placement in Waterstone's branches and on their website. And the Caribbean connection? The Same Earth, the first novel by the young Jamaican writer Kei Miller, is one of the featured titles.



(Can't wait till March, when Kei's book will appear in shops? In the February CRB, you can read his essay on being a poet with an identity crisis.)

Commonwealth shortlists....

The 2008 Commonwealth Writers' Prize shortlists were announced today--see them here. Disappointingly, only one Caribbean title has been shortlisted for the "best book" regional prize in the Canada/Caribbean division: Erna Brodber's new novel The Rainmaker's Mistake (look out for Annie Paul's review in the February CRB). And all the "best first book" shortlistees are Canadian--though one of them is crypto-Caribbean. David Chariandy, whose novel Soucouyant is shortlisted, was born in Canada of Trinidadian ancestry. (Thanks to CRB contributor Jonathan Ali for pointing this out.)

I'm sure some Antilles readers will share my disappointment that more Caribbean writers were not shortlisted for the only major writing prize most are eligible for.... What others do you wish had caught the judges' eyes? What were the other standout Anglophone Caribbean fiction titles of last year? (I'd point to Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw's Four Taxis Facing North, a CRB book of the year.) Tell us in the comments below.

What's going on?

- Thinking of doing a creative writing MFA? Geoffrey Philp offers some advice on how to choose the right programme, and includes suggestions from other writers as well.

- Tobias Buckell muses on the perils of blurbing: "authors get enough rejection in life as it is with their work ... having to turn down a fellow colleague is awkward."

- In yesterday's Stabroek News, Al Creighton turns to the words of Martin Carter for wisdom and solace in the aftermath of the horrific Lusignan murders.

- Aphra Benn's seventeenth-century novel Oroonoko is a crucial early representation of the Caribbean (specifically, Suriname) in literature. A stage adaptation by the Nigerian writer Biyi Bandele has just opened in New York; Charles Isherwood reviews it in the New York Times.

- And Marlon James loves Junot Díaz's novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao--which, as he points out in this blog post, he's reviewed for the February issue of the CRB (running a little late, dear readers, but on its way to subscribers shortly...).

(Indeed, it's because your humble Antilles blogger has been working hard to get the next CRB off to press that posting here has been light of late. What can you look forward to in our next issue, apart from Marlon's zesty piece? Reviews of the latest books by V.S. Naipaul, Erna Brodber, and Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw, plus an anthology of poems about Che Guevara and the massive catalogue of the Yale Centre for British Art's recent Belisario show.... Also essays by Kei Miller and Tobias Buckell, a review of Roberta Stoddart's retrospective catalogue, a portfolio of contemporary Cuban art, poems by Tanya Shirley, Vahni Capildeo, and Ishion Hutchinson.... If you're not a subscriber, better sign up now!)

Casa de las Américas prizewinners

Cuba's Casa de las Américas has announced the winners of its 2008 premios literarios. Most of the prizes are for literature in Spanish, and this year's winners include writers from Argentina, Colombia, Chile, and Mexico. Two of the prizes have gone to Caribbean writers. Haitian Louis-Philippe Dalembert has won the prize for Caribbean literature in French or Creole, for his novel Les dieux voyagent la nuit; and Héctor Díaz Polanco of the Dominican Republic has won the Ezequiel Martínez Estrada essay prize. (The Casa de las Américas has not awarded a prize for literature in English since 2006, when the winner was Mark McWatt's Suspended Sentences.)