llewellyn xavier: blue ocean sanctuary (exhibition catalogue)

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

[email protected]

Exhibitions Department

Head of International Exhibitions

Brittany Lopez Slater +1 212 940 1299

[email protected]

Exhibitions Manager

Edwin Pennicott +44 20 7901 2909

[email protected]

Contemporary Art Department

Specialist, Head of Day Sale

John McCord +1 212 940 1261

[email protected]

Cataloguer

Nicole Smith +1 212 940 1387

[email protected]

Operations

Operations Manager

Holden Babcock

Senior Property Manager

Richard Berardino

Assistant Property Controller

Andrea Brignolo

Photographer

Jean Bourbon

Blue Ocean SanctuaryBy Llewellyn Xavier


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


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).


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


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


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.


1 Algorithm Complexity


2 The High Renaissance


3 The Viscounts of Limoges


4 Conversation Between Friends


5 Fish and Pommes Frites


6 The Pink Fairies of Findhorn


7 The Strawberry Field at 10.50pm


8 Ars Amatoria or The Art of Love


9 Earth Precepts


10 Absolute Silence in the Bois de Boulogne


11 The Paradox of Form


12 Blue Ocean Sanctuary


13 Unconditional Requisite


14 A Poem for My Muse


15 Lemon Seed


16 Pink Flamingo Ballet


17 Medici Medici


18 Alpha Blue Rainbow


19 Purple Chip Pentaquark


20 Chrysalis


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)


3 The Viscounts of Limoges, circa 2000–2015

oil on canvas

24 x 18 in. (61 x 45.7 cm)


4 Conversation Between Friends, circa 2000–2015

oil on canvas

24 x 18 in. (61 x 45.7 cm)


5 Fish and Pommes Frites, circa 2000–2015

oil on canvas

24 x 18 in. (61 x 45.7 cm)


6 The Pink Fairies of Findhorn, circa 2000–2015

oil on canvas

40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm)


7 The Strawberry Field at 10.50pm,

circa 2000–2015

oil on canvas

40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm)


8 Ars Amatoria or The Art of Love,

circa 2000–2015

oil on canvas

40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm)


9 Earth Precepts, circa 2000–2015

oil on canvas

40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm)


10 Absolute Silence in the Bois de Boulogne,

circa 2000–2015

oil on canvas

40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm)


11 The Paradox of Form, circa 2000–2015

oil on canvas

40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm)


12 Blue Ocean Sanctuary, circa 2000–2015

oil on canvas

40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm)


13 Unconditional Requisite, circa 2000–2015

oil on canvas

40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm)


14 A Poem for My Muse, circa 2000–2015

oil on canvas

40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm)


15 Lemon Seed, circa 2000–2015

oil on canvas

40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm)


16 Pink Flamingo Ballet, circa 2000–2015

oil on canvas

60 x 36 in. (152.4 x 91.4 cm)


17 Medici Medici, circa 2000–2015

oil on canvas

60 x 36 in. (152.4 x 91.4 cm)


18 Alpha Blue Rainbow, circa 2000–2015

oil on canvas

60 x 36 in. (152.4 x 91.4 cm)


19 Purple Chip Pentaquark, circa 2000–2015

oil on canvas

60 x 36 in. (152.4 x 91.4 cm)


20 Chrysalis, circa 2000–2015

oil on canvas

60 x 36 in. (152.4 x 91.4 cm)


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

[email protected]

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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