"I really don't like the Art Society," Leroy Clarke told the assembled members and guests of the Art Society at their headquarters in Federation Park, Port-of-Spain, on July 18. "Growing up I felt it snobbish and elitist. I don't like anything really."
There was a hushed pause, a slight intake of breath from the chairman, Diana Mahabir Wyatt, and a brief moment of awkwardness. It soon passed as Clarke pressed on with an epic 15-minute monologue encompassing death, douens, madness, politics, and the sound of his parents making love when he was a child. It's classic Clarke, a rich blend of rhetoric, misanthropy and dark humour.
A few days later at his house in Cascade, he told the T&T Guardian he's a deeply serious man. "When I'm catching joke is when you better watch out, because that's when I'm saying the most serious things."
The third instalment of the ASTT's Conversation with the Elders was a serious affair for many reasons. The topic of conversation printed on the invitation said The Visual Arts in T&T in the Last Quarter of the 20th Century, but in reality it felt like an occasion for everybody, audience included, to get things off their chests.
The speakers were Clarke, English-born artist Sarah Beckett and two art teachers, Marcia Des Vignes from Tobago and Trevor Byron from south Trinidad ("country, country" as he puts it).
But this was certainly no celebration of the arts. Many of the speakers came to talk about the struggles they faced, the triumphs over adversity and finally to mourn what they see as a kind of death of the arts. The importance of art education, they all agreed, is thoroughly undermined by parents and teachers discouraging the next generation from pursuing creative careers. A paucity of government funding for start-up projects is strangling talent at the grassroots level. And Carnival costume design is "no longer an art form, just an exhibition of flesh."
Should we be depressed by this or is it simply the kind of thing one expects when one converses with one's elders? When we speak to our grandparents they often evoke an image of the modern world as a post-apocalyptic evil, so why should the art world be any different? Never mind the flourishing galleries like Medulla and 101 in PoS, the vibrant art scene represented across the public spectrum, from fine art like Kenwyn Crichlow to the People's Canvas surrounding the Queen's Park Oval, the elders have gripes.
Perhaps it is more important to point out the bad than the good, in order to effect the change that is perceived to be required in T&T's attitude to art. And there are serious points to be addressed no matter how gloomy.
Des Vignes spoke passionately with her opening gambit. "Tobago has an embattled past," she said, "and continues to be embattled, politically. This has spilt into art education."
She talked about the 1970 uprising when many of the English, Canadian and Tobagonian art teachers left the island, leaving a void. The creation of the Arts Centre in 1985 sparked a mini-revival but she bemoans the lack of an art society in Tobago itself and every day she encounters children discouraged from pursuing art. The Heritage Festival, she said, is inspiring young artists and she singled out Edward Hernandez for his efforts over 50 years in educating Tobagonian children in art and art history.
Byron, a teacher for 30 years, talked about the demise of the Southern Arts Society, initiated in the 1950s based in "a small, rotten old house on the San Fernando Wharf," but disbanded in the 1980s. The society would apply for bursaries to benefit local artists but eventually those artists migrated north, marking the end. Byron wants the government to "foster art throughout the country so it can flourish."
Sarah Beckett came to T&T in 1969 from a British art scene where there were no women.
"The attitude in the 60s was, you went to art school to get a husband, then you could paint in your spare time in between bringing up kids."
On arrival in T&T she found the situation the same for women, except that Pat Bishop was emerging and proved to be a great influence. Beckett directly addressed the evening's topic of conversation, saying, "In the last quarter of the last century there was some really powerful painting going on in this country that was linked to a philosophy and a vision of where Trinidad was going and what Trinidad was."
Namechecking 20th-century artists Boodhoo for "the profundity of his work," Rambissoon ("an unsung hero to me") and Pat Chu Foon, she commented on "all these people who had this intense idea of this being a small island with something very powerful to offer the world. Which is always a dichotomy in this country–are we going to be wannabe Miami or are we going to be Trinidad? And what does that mean, with the extraordinary mixture here?"
She ended on a gloomy note, talking about money (art always comes back to money). Beckett founded a non-profit outreach project in 2005 that folded because she couldn't get funding. It's a reminder that while dollars flow through the bank accounts of established artists, there remains a reluctance to publicly fund the next generation.
While the others spoke passionately and fluently, Clarke's words were stark, incisive and critical. He talked about his "personal struggle," "plodding along" with his own compass, his early shyness and reluctance to attend Art Society social events. He referred sombrely to his first solo exhibition Labour of Love in 1966, ripped apart by Derek Walcott.
"The first time I ever appeared in a newspaper, I was the first person queuing to buy a copy in Independence Square. The headline was 'Too Early, Mr Clarke.' Walcott said the one redeeming factor was you could buy one painting and get one free.
"He saw me at UWI on the Monday and asked, 'How you feel?' I told him I was all right but I wasn't, that Sunday morning I had wept like a child."
But Clarke doesn't always speak just about himself. His philosophical assessment of the country was in some ways shocking. "Trinidad is a brutal place, and if after 50 years we have not really made a mark in the world with art, it is because of that brutality. I am not even a Trinidadian, because I don't like Trinidad. I don't like what it is. I was born an unsatisfied person, very few things please me. When I matured I realised that was my strength."
He talked drolly about wanting to kill two of his contemporaries and peers in his younger years. "I went to [the late artist] Boscoe Holder's house and said. 'I've come to kill you.'
"He sat me down we drank some rum and he told me he'd gone mad, running down the street naked and thing. I thought, 'I don't need to kill you, you're already dead.'"
A mischievous grin set the room rocking with laughter. Later, he said, he went to the house of painter and costume designer Carlisle Chang, who told Clarke, "You came to kill me; I'm already dead. Because Port-of-Spain has become a Hong Kong–buying and selling everything that exists."
The comment was a jibe at the rampant commercialisation of T&T, in everything from Carnival to cars.
The elder statesman of T&T art ended with a message for the youth that people should never underestimate art but elevate its status in society. Recently a 75-year-old man he grew up with spotted him in the street and asked him, "You still drawing and thing?" The man was totally unaware of Clarke's career after they had left school. He cites this as an example of the blind spot some people have when it comes to art and the lack of awareness of this country's greatest talents.
"Development is key. The non-emergence of young artists is a serious issue and will continue to be so while we have this apprehension about what being an artist is.
"Building a society is an artist's business. He is the progenitor."