Essay on Edouard Duval-Carrié's

EDOUARD DUVAL-CARRIÉ: LE ROI HENRI IER ET SA COUR KING HENRI AND HAITI'S ROYAL COURT In an example of contemporary history painting that styled royal wear and furs, inappropriate for Haiti’s tropical draws on a postmodern Baroque style to critically reflect climate. The work pictures him as an emotionally distant on the violence of history as written, this work presents leader and a racially4 ambiguous mimic man detached a moment just beyond the shadow of revolution, the from his people. While none of these qualities hold up coronation of King Henri Christophe of Haiti in 1811. under historical scrutiny in relation to Christophe himself, the visual discourse in which the print participated saw On the left of the composition is a group of individuals “royalty” in a European context, which had come to be anchored by the King’s wife, the fascinating Queen viewed as an inherent characteristic rather than a title Marie-Louise Coidavid. She is accompanied by her two conferred, or often self-conferred, to the victor of a battle daughters Princess Françoise-Améthyste and Princess – which it was. Nevertheless, the notion of a possible Anne-Athénaïre,HISTORICAL their son, the Prince Royal Victor RETELLINGJacques slave becoming king AND was untenable THE and the print was and the king’s secretary, the brilliant Baron de Vâstéy. intended to portray the King as a fraud. It was distributed The ensemble share the same coronation platform as a propaganda image throughout the Atlantic world [as Christophe and below themPOSTMODERN all, throngs of people during BAROQUE Christophe’s reign and he, along with de Vâstéy,] whose faces are represented by masks and headdresses worked tirelessly to provide a counter narrative by drawn from the Americas and the length and breadth of extolling in image and text what Marlene Daut has the African continent, stare up at the central figures in described as a black Atlantic humanism. supplication, awe and desire. Each figure is opulently attired and presented in hierarchic order. As such, the The artist heightens the surreal and distorted nature of Queen dominates the left side of the painting, seated on Haitian history in the work. The faces of the figures are a low throne and adorning a European dress paired with a fantastic in ways that recall the vegetable portraits by head wrap, a style known in the eighteenth century French the Italian Renaissance painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Caribbean. Cloth being a valuable commodity in plantation often cited as an inspiration for Surrealism, a movement Ineconomies, Le the roi headwrap Henri was used ier by freewomenet sa ofcour (2020),in intimate partnership Edouard with the Haitian Duval-Carrié artistic color and creoles to demonstrate the relative wealth of renaissance of the 1940s. In process, the work performs deploysthe wearer by the a amountpostmodern of cloth their wrap baroque required. approachan epistemological to mashup reimagine in the realm of what the visual, has Duval-Carrié has added the extra flourishes of a straw hat, capable of blunting the veracity of the historical record beenhat pin and presented a finial of feathers toas the history Queen's trousseau. through and a reorienting contemporary dimensions of our pastlens. that havePlacing allAt her that feet, a boawe resembling think the wesnake Lwaknow Damballah of is thebeen past distorted. into the aesthetic arena suspended in air and the ground below her is decorated forwith sacred debate, Vodoun veve perhaps writings honoring this the Lwas,is what it means today to be called a perhaps indicating the Queen’s devotion and thankfulness This work is funded with support from Oolite Arts' Michael Richards Award. Text by Erica Moiah James, PhD. historyto her gods for thispainter. moment. Rather than produce work that re-presents eventsIn the composition, of the the Queen past, is mirrored Duval-Carrié’s by the image art self-reflexively asks those of King Henri Christophe. Between them, an architectural #EdouardDuvalCarrié thatrendering engage of the Queen’s it Pavilion to interrogate and a pair of dancing accepted narratives of #atTheBasshistory and Taíno men, the inhabitants Columbus met on the island @TheBassMoA theof Hayti mechanismsare represented. The artist of drew power, Christophe’s privilege, violence andthebass.org/edcinfo the visual pose and dress from an infamous print entitled Cristoforo thatEnrico I Reicrafted de Hayti, 1811 them.—representing him in European- To describe Duval-Carrié’s approach ed the infamous Code Noir (1685) to this retelling as postmodern ba- that governed slavery and relations roque recalls a European artistic tra- between white French people and dition that thrived in the wake of its enslaved Africans in French territo- Renaissance (1600-1750) and whose ries, the year after the Hall of Mir- opulence, ostentatious decoration rors was completed. The Code also and detail, that openly courted dra- outlined legal and illegal brutalities ma, the theatrical, the sensuous and against the Black body the crown the emotional, rose simultaneously deemed necessary in order to ensure with the rise of plantation slavery in obedience. It was a central edict of Haiti. Behind the glass in Versailles’ the French Baroque period and lin- resplendent Hall of Mirrors, a castle gers in the air surrounding this work. and room that came to epitomize the grandeur of the French Baroque Here, Duval-Carrié temporally dis- age, lies Haiti. This room was rede- places and redeploys the aesthetic signed by Jules Hardouin Mansart traditions of the period to produce a (1678-1684) in tribute to France’s work of art that intentionally works economic, artistic and political suc- to disassemble and put into question cess. Though celebrating success- modern traditions in the West that es increasingly powered by Saint served to re-present and whereby Domingue, unsurprisingly there is no simultaneously erase the inconve- reference to its tropical landscapes nient Other. His work undoes the and the brutalities of its plantation moral pose of modernism by un- slave economy in a single mural or mooring epistemes and the produc- element in the room. tion of knowledge and their comin- gled visual frames. While Louis XIV entertained at Ver- sailles, in Saint Domingue he enact- The subject of this etching (on Plexi- glas) is an extraordinary group of fig- tion where efforts by enslaved peo- ures connected to Henri Christophe, ple to escape slavery were deemed King of Haiti who is represented in as a sign of mental illness on their the right quadrant of the work. In life part. In this arena, what might a and in death Christophe has been kinder gentler war against slavery tried and judged in various courts of look like? public opinion, in Haiti and throughout the transatlantic universe, and The Haitian Revolution, in which has often been found wanting. Ru- Christophe played a major role, was mor, gossip and innuendo describ- a subaltern revolution that killed and ing acts attributed to him or asso- defeated those who for more than a ciated with him, have often been century at the time, had enslaved, regurgitated in scholarship, without degraded, violated, killed and dis- reference or eyewitness accounts as posed people that looked like him. historical fact. He has been blamed For Black Haitians, the choice of for acts of extreme violence and death rather than submission once deemed a murderer and a tyrant - by more to re-enslavement represent- those he defeated and battled; by ed no choice at all. After tasting the those for whom his very existence freedom and the restoration of their challenged their fundamental be- humanity, death became their only lief in slavery and hierarchies of hu- alternative. manity; by those who envied him; and at times by those he ruled and On its surface, the work presents a conscripted. And yet he remains one moment just beyond the shadow of of the most fascinating historical revolution, the coronation of King figures in the eighteenth and nine- Henri Christophe in 1811, after the teenth century Atlantic world. murder of Dessalines in 1806 and his subsequent rise to leadership first With the comfort of time, space and as President and then as King of the circumstances away from chattel young nation. Christophe was a man slavery, many contemporary artists who in the midst of rumors about and scholars have also judged his him in Haiti and beyond, conscripted reported actions through a lens of workers to get his architectural and moral purity that requires one to set defense projects completed; be- aside any accountability for the fun- came a leader who ordered Haitians damental inhumanity and violence to return to the fields to secure the of the world of plantation slavery economy and established the first into which Christophe was born and art school in the Americas. With Bar- to which he committed his life to on de Vâstéy, he established a print- destroying. To not only expect, but ing press at Sans Souci to counter to insist on a kinder gentler revolu- narratives being deployed against tion by Haitians traumatized by the him and the Kingdom. He showed violence of their untenable world; himself to be a man who having led to question their actions towards a war that resulted in death of thou- freedom at all, exhibits a critique sands for the freedom of all, believed grounded in drapetomania, a condi- unquestionably in the humanity and central figures in supplication, awe and desire. The setting is shaped by heavy velvet brocaded curtains, a signature element in baroque paintings. Each figure is opulently attired and presented in hierarchic order. The Queen dominates the left side of the work while seated on a low throne. She is attired as if the wom- en that dominate Agostino Brunias’ paintings were her personal hand- maidens.

Load more