LLEWELLYN XAVIER: BLUE OCEAN SANCTUARY (Exhibition Catalogue)

Blue Ocean Sanctuary

By Llewellyn Xavier

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Blue Ocean Sanctuary

By Llewellyn Xavier

Exhibition Dates & Location January 14 – February 14, 2016 450 Park Avenue New York 10022 Viewing Monday – Saturday 10am – 6pm Sunday 12pm – 6pm Enquiries +1 212 940 1261 +1 212 940 1387 blueoceansanctuary@phillips.com Exhibitions Department Head of International Exhibitions Brittany Lopez Slater +1 212 940 1299 bslater@phillips.com Exhibitions Manager Edwin Pennicott +44 20 7901 2909 epennicott@phillips.com

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Contemporary Art Department Specialist, Head of Day Sale John McCord +1 212 940 1261 jmccord@phillips.com Cataloguer Nicole Smith +1 212 940 1387 nsmith@phillips.com Operations Operations Manager Holden Babcock Senior Property Manager Richard Berardino Assistant Property Controller Andrea Brignolo Photographer Jean Bourbon

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Foreword

On behalf of Phillips, I am pleased and honoured to present Blue Ocean Sanctuary, Llewellyn Xavier’s frst large-scale exhibition in New York.

We are delighted to open the 2016 Season with this show, comprised of twenty works spanning the years 2000 to 2015. Each painting embodies the colour, texture, beauty and light of the Caribbean whilst the exhibition as a whole manifests the signifcant infuence on his art of the rich culture and heritage of the island of St Lucia. Llewellyn’s work is included in the collections of numerous museums and now Phillips has been awarded the opportunity to share with you its unique energy and beauty.

Edward Dolman Chairman & Chief Executive Ofcer

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Llewellyn Xavier was born in 1945 in Saint Lucia, West Indies, where he currently lives and works. In 1961, Xavier was working as an agricultural apprentice when a friend gave him a box of watercolour paints, marking the beginning of Xavier’s lifelong passion for using art to express his view of the world around him, eventually taking him from the Caribbean to the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada.

In 2004, Llewellyn Xavier was made a member of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of his contribution to art.

Llewellyn Xavier’s work has been exhibited at important institutions around the world, including the Whitechapel Art Gallery (London, United Kingdom); the African American Museum (Philadelphia, P.A.); the Studio Museum in Harlem (New York, N.Y.); and the Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.). His work can be found in prominent permanent collections, such as the Smithsonian Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C.); the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.); the Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.); the American Museum of Natural History (New York, N.Y.); the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto, Canada); the Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge, United Kingdom); the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, United Kingdom); the Ulster Museum (Belfast, United Kingdom); and the Walker Art Gallery (Liverpool, United Kingdom).

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Artist’s Statement

Growing up in abject poverty on the tiny Caribbean island of Saint Lucia and going to school without shoes and having to walk eight miles to and from school each day, meant that I was seldom on time for roll call. The school consisted of one single room. The Headmaster's desk was at one end of the room on a makeshif platform. I lef at the age of fourteen, soon afer embarking on a wild and riotous, hedonistic global quest ostensibly to fnd my true self, eventually landing at a silent monastery in Montreal, Canada.

Prior to my stint as a wannabe Cistercian Monk I lived with my spiritual director, the Archbishop of Halifax in his magnifcent palace, until I was politely asked to vacate my room to make way for Pope John Paul II, his staf, and the retinue of servants who were visiting Canada.

Afer a year of what was possibly the most miserable and unhappy time of my life, I went out of the Monastery for a month of discernment, a period in which would-be monks go back into the world to discern whether monasticism is their true calling. The Archbishop and I hired a luxury yacht and sailed the Southern Caribbean before returning to the Monastery. Soon afer I returned, I got up one morning, packed my very small suitcase, took a taxi to the airport, and lef without saying a word to anyone. I went to England, got married to Christina, and resumed my career as an Artist.

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A career that started with me painting what is unquestionably the most awful “Airport Art” imaginable, was followed by a series of collaborations with John Lennon, James Baldwin and the infamous Jean Genet. My greatest ambition at that time was not to be a successful artist, but to shock Genet; I almost succeeded!

The work in this exhibition is the result of ffy years of observing the behaviour of paint, the juxtaposition of colours in close proximity to one other, creating texture and attempting to understand the paradox of form.

I would like to dedicate the exhibition to my wife Christina, whose opinion on art I greatly value.

She has a brilliant, clear understanding of the art being created now.

Most signifcantly, I would like to thank the Chairman and CEO of Phillips, Edward Dolman, for fnding me, Brittany Lopez Slater, Head of International Exhibitions, and last but most certainly not least, my Manager, Graham StoreyMacintosh, who keeps me frmly grounded.

Llewellyn Xavier Silver Point 2015

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Llewellyn Xavier: Globalist, Caribbean, Antillean, St. Lucian

The career of Llewellyn Xavier inevitably raises the issue of a “Caribbean,” “Antillean,” even “St. Lucian” sensibility in the visual arts. Current dialogues about art in the Caribbean revolve around the notion that the Caribbean is as much a state of mind as it is a marker of locale.

If the destiny of island citizens is to migrate, circumnavigate, emigrate and immigrate, their lives and careers—and in this case art production—embody fux, change and mutation.

Xavier himself lef St. Lucia for Barbados, before going on to London and then the United States, and fnally returning to his native island to settle and work.

The publication of this survey of Xavier’s work coincides with a particularly dynamic moment in the art scene in the Caribbean as it is poised to assert itself as yet another nexus of the contemporary art world. Witness the convening of organizations such as the International Association of Art Critics in Barbados and Martinique in 2003, or the immigration of international art stars from Europe and the United States who have begun to establish residences and studios on various islands. Observers and visitors to the Caribbean will also note a number of exciting exhibitions and projects both in the region and outside of it, and also the emergence of infuential organizations that have precipitated, accompanied and even stimulated this new interest in the Caribbean as an artistic center: the Contemporary Art Center in Trinidad, the Centro León in the Dominican Republic, the continuing efort in Barbados to formulate a National Gallery as a showcase for modern and contemporary art, the new contemporary center in Curaçao, annual exhibitions at the National Gallery in Jamaica, and the on-going print annuals and art fairs in Puerto Rico.

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All of this coalescence of energy and synergy may eventually eliminate the need of young artists to leave their native islands to establish their careers. As media and the Internet have facilitated the exchange of images and information, as travel has become a regular part of the lives of greater numbers of world citizens, the Caribbean inevitably is thrust into a global purview and the world will come to them. Artists of Xavier’s generation did not have that option and this fact had a profound efect on Xavier’s work. The specters of Europe and the United States propelled his international peregrinations during his formative and maturing years. The map of this journey is seen in the variegated character of his work, which reveals Xavier as adept and able to immerse himself thoroughly in any given context. What is of interest then is the character that Xavier’s work assumes when he returns to St. Lucia, when he exchanged the fltered, opaque light of the northern hemisphere for the brilliance of the equatorial belt.

Such a reaction to the Caribbean terrain, even if primarily personal, has inevitably been tantamount to a renewed declaration of selfafrmation and national pride on the part of the native-born artist, or the writer who achieves a comparable lushness of language.1 This was particularly true in the pre-independence era of the 1940s and 50s and formed the philosophical underpinnings of the journal Tropiques, published in the 1940s by the Martinican poet and politician Aimé Césaire, his wife Suzanne and writer René Ménil. Through the political essays, art criticism, poetry, and feature articles in this journal they promoted the concept of an “Antillean identity.” This was tantamount to a wholescale reconstruction of the colonialist image of the creole cultures of the Antilles, and repudiated

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the perception of Antillean culture as a bastardized amalgam of “others” and declared it as a valid cultural phenomenon.2 Nature again was the basis of this political and cultural afrmation refected in Suzanne Césaire’s image of the “L’homme de plante”: an individual in balance with the rhythm of the life of the universe found in nature.3 Xavier afrms a cultural specifcity that buttresses what might be called a “local” sensibility to his work. Even Xavier’s watercolor compositions of the late 1990s and early 2000s are studies of the particular quality and nuances of light, land and water working in concert to produce the particular environment he can glimpse from his studio on St. Lucia. The majestic forms of the twin peaks of the Pitons that dominate the landscape out his window become iconic forms that allow him to explore the transparency and opacity of the medium in simple gestures of the hand and the brush.

In that sense Xavier’s own response to what Edward Lucie Smith describes as “the threats to the fragile ecology of the island,” is indeed the reaction of a son returning to his native land in the spirit of Lam, Césaire and Carpentier, true pioneers in the cultural and political emancipation of the Caribbean. As the unique aspects of the St. Lucian environment continue to guide and impact the evolution of his imagery, then, Xavier stands as a vital force in the ongoing dialogue of globalism and locality, cultural tourism and cultural sovereignty in the art of the Caribbean.

Lowery Stokes Sims December, 2006

1. Edmondo Desnoes, Lam: Azul y negro. (Havana: Cuadernos de la Casa de las Américas, 1963): 6.

2. Aimé Césaire, “Wifredo Lam de l’Antilles,” Cahiers d’Art, 20–21 (1945–1946): 357–359.

3. Suzanne Césaire, “Malaise d’un civilization,” Tropiques 5 (April 1942): 45.

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1

Algorithm Complexity

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2

The High Renaissance

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3

The Viscounts of Limoges

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4

Conversation Between Friends

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5

Fish and Pommes Frites

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6

The Pink Fairies of Findhorn

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7

The Strawberry Field at 10.50pm

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8

Ars Amatoria or The Art of Love

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9

Earth Precepts

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10

Absolute Silence in the Bois de Boulogne

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11

The Paradox of Form

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12

Blue Ocean Sanctuary

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13

Unconditional Requisite

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14

A Poem for My Muse

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15

Lemon Seed

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16

Pink Flamingo Ballet

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17

Medici Medici

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18

Alpha Blue Rainbow

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19

Purple Chip Pentaquark

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20

Chrysalis

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Works in the Exhibition

Exhibition Dates & Location January 14 – February 14, 2016 450 Park Avenue New York 10022 Viewing Hours Monday – Saturday 10am – 6pm Sunday 12pm – 6pm Enquiries +1 212 940 1261 +1 212 940 1387 blueoceansanctuary@phillips.com

1

Algorithm Complexity, circa 2000–2015 oil on canvas 24 x 18 in. (61 x 45.7 cm) Signed “Llewellyn Xavier” on the reverse.

11

The Paradox of Form, circa 2000–2015 oil on canvas 40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm) Signed “Llewellyn Xavier” on the reverse.

2

The High Renaissance, circa 2000–2015 oil on canvas 24 x 18 in. (61 x 45.7 cm) Signed “Llewellyn Xavier” on the reverse.

12

Blue Ocean Sanctuary, circa 2000–2015 oil on canvas 40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm) Signed “Llewellyn Xavier” on the reverse.

3

The Viscounts of Limoges, circa 2000–2015 oil on canvas 24 x 18 in. (61 x 45.7 cm) Signed “Llewellyn Xavier” on the reverse.

13

Unconditional Requisite, circa 2000–2015 oil on canvas 40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm) Signed “Llewellyn Xavier” on the reverse.

4

Conversation Between Friends, circa 2000–2015 oil on canvas 24 x 18 in. (61 x 45.7 cm) Signed “Llewellyn Xavier” on the reverse.

14

A Poem for My Muse, circa 2000–2015 oil on canvas 40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm) Signed “Llewellyn Xavier” on the reverse.

5

Fish and Pommes Frites, circa 2000–2015 oil on canvas 24 x 18 in. (61 x 45.7 cm) Signed “Llewellyn Xavier” on the reverse.

15

Lemon Seed, circa 2000–2015 oil on canvas 40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm) Signed “Llewellyn Xavier” on the reverse.

6

The Pink Fairies of Findhorn, circa 2000–2015 oil on canvas 40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm) Signed “Llewellyn Xavier” on the reverse.

16

Pink Flamingo Ballet, circa 2000–2015 oil on canvas 60 x 36 in. (152.4 x 91.4 cm) Signed “Llewellyn Xavier” on the reverse.

7

The Strawberry Field at 10.50pm, circa 2000–2015 oil on canvas 40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm) Signed “Llewellyn Xavier” on the reverse.

17

Medici Medici, circa 2000–2015 oil on canvas 60 x 36 in. (152.4 x 91.4 cm) Signed “Llewellyn Xavier” on the reverse.

18 8

Ars Amatoria or The Art of Love, circa 2000–2015 oil on canvas 40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm) Signed “Llewellyn Xavier” on the reverse.

Alpha Blue Rainbow, circa 2000–2015 oil on canvas 60 x 36 in. (152.4 x 91.4 cm) Signed “Llewellyn Xavier” on the reverse.

19

Purple Chip Pentaquark, circa 2000–2015 oil on canvas 60 x 36 in. (152.4 x 91.4 cm) Signed “Llewellyn Xavier” on the reverse.

20

Chrysalis, circa 2000–2015 oil on canvas 60 x 36 in. (152.4 x 91.4 cm) Signed “Llewellyn Xavier” on the reverse.

9

Cover 12. Blue Ocean Sanctuary (detail) Pages 2–3 10. Absolute Silence in the Bois de Boulogne (detail) Opposite foreword 15. Lemon Seed (detail) Opposite essay 19. Purple Chip Pentaquark (detail) Following 18. Alpha Blue Rainbow (detail)

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10

Earth Precepts, circa 2000–2015 oil on canvas 40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm) Signed “Llewellyn Xavier” on the reverse.

Absolute Silence in the Bois de Boulogne, circa 2000–2015 oil on canvas 40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm) Signed “Llewellyn Xavier” on the reverse.

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phillips.com

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