Caribbean art
Caribbean art refers to the visual (including painting, photography, and printmaking) as well as plastic arts (such as sculpture) originating from the islands of the Caribbean (for mainland-Caribbean see Caribbean South America). Art in the Caribbean reflects thousands of years of habitation by the Arawak peoples of the Caribbean followed by waves of immigration, which included artists of European origins and subsequently by artists with heritage from countries all around the world (including countries in the African continent). The nature of Caribbean art reflects these diverse origins, as artists have taken their traditions and adapted these influences to reflect the reality of their lives in the Caribbean.
The governments of the Caribbean have at times played a central role in the development of Caribbean culture. However, some scholars and artists challenge this governmental role. Historically and in later times artists have combined British, French, Spanish, Dutch and African artistic traditions, at times embracing European styles and at other times working to promote nationalism by developing distinctly Caribbean styles. Caribbean art remains the combination of these various influences.
The first immigrants (said to be originally from the Orinoco basin) to the Caribbean region were the "Indians" or Taíno (those found throughout much of the Greater and Lesser Antilles), and the Arawak (those found in South America and part of Trinidad). These early Caribbean's are supposed to have occupied the region since 2000BC. In Puerto Rico and the Lesser Antilles, the Taíno-Arawak art has been found in stone carvings, figurines (which are essentially curvilinear) and pottery dating from the period before European contact and are said to be as old as twenty-four hundred years. These few discovered artifacts, preserved in museum collections, have contributed new culturally hybrid art forms.
Not until the 1950s and 1960s did a small number of Caribbean artists began to renew and in some cases re-invent indigenous art forms. Currently there are no indigenous artists practicing in any media in the Caribbean.
The settlement in the Caribbean islands began by the Spanish on the island of Hispaniola as early as 1496. They then settled on Puerto Rico followed by Cuba. They did not colonise Trinidad until 1592. It is extremely unlikely that the Taíno-Arawak people had any input to the spaniade artistic developments since it has been estimated that their population was quickly depleted from 200,000 to as little as 500.
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