llewellyn xavier: blue ocean sanctuary (exhibition catalogue)
DESCRIPTION
Phillips opens its 2016 season with Blue Ocean Sanctuary, Llewellyn Xavier’s first large-scale exhibition in New York.TRANSCRIPT
Blue Ocean SanctuaryBy Llewellyn Xavier
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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
Exhibitions Department
Head of International Exhibitions
Brittany Lopez Slater +1 212 940 1299
Exhibitions Manager
Edwin Pennicott +44 20 7901 2909
Contemporary Art Department
Specialist, Head of Day Sale
John McCord +1 212 940 1261
Cataloguer
Nicole Smith +1 212 940 1387
Operations
Operations Manager
Holden Babcock
Senior Property Manager
Richard Berardino
Assistant Property Controller
Andrea Brignolo
Photographer
Jean Bourbon
Blue Ocean SanctuaryBy Llewellyn Xavier
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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.
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 Storey-
Macintosh, 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.
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 self-
afrmation 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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1 Algorithm Complexity, circa 2000–2015
oil on canvas
24 x 18 in. (61 x 45.7 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
9 Earth Precepts, circa 2000–2015
oil on canvas
40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm)
Signed “Llewellyn Xavier” on the reverse.
10 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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
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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