Plus…

There is only one medium through which the past talks to the future, and it is through art.

The only reason we know anything about the de’Medicis from Italy is because of Michelangelo and Botticelli. Most people first encounter the story of Julius Caesar or Antony and Cleopatra through William Shakespeare.

Great men, great women, and great works live on only through cultural storytellers or artists.

Yes, of course, some scholars write dense history books, but for the most part, these are not popular ways in which most people grapple with the past. Scholarship is reserved for an erudite elite. Art is for mass consumption.

This will even be even truer as we undergo an epistemological revolution with the fall of the word and the rise of the image. Far less people are reading.

It is mainly through art that a culture learns to understand itself. Art is a record of what was. Art is a coded message to the future.

If you take the long view of Jamaican history, it is likely that in 100 years the most famous Manley will actually be Edna. Why? Because of the sculpture on the waterfront,
Negro Aroused, where hordes of teenagers and tourists will walk by that statue and ask what it is, and who did it?

Now, DK Duncan would say that a man’s life’s work must speak for itself. You don’t have to call attention to it. In fact, you should not call attention to it. Let the life and the works speak as evidence of a well-contributed life.

Sorry to disagree, but he was wrong. The work does not speak for itself. It has to be packaged and told and sold. Or it will simply be buried under the increasingly rapid pace of daily life.

The 1970s, from which DK rose, remain a very vexing time for us as Jamaicans. We are unable to confront it fully. So much of what happened is shrouded in secrecy and mystery. Verandah talk.

We continue to struggle with the inexorable clash and chaos of race, class, and violence.

We are so traumatised by what we have done and what we have failed to do that we have difficulty properly implementing viable programmes for national development.

I hope that we can continue to shine a light on this era through art and discussions.

And now, part of the DK Duncan story and Jamaica in the 1970s is captured in a work of art by the leading artist of this time Phillip Thomas.

Ever extending the name, thereby delaying the inevitable oblivion, and leaving a memory trail of life and times, Thomas has created a masterpiece on canvas.

On Saturday, January 20, at the Olympia Gallery on Hope Road, a multigenerational group of Jamaicans from different walks of life gathered to discuss Thomas’s work
The Life and Times, which will be made into a documentary from Adtelligent to be released later this year.

What happened on Saturday has never occurred ever anywhere in the world.

An artist born in 1980 created a painting about a man and a time he did not know, and there is a gathering of other artists, thinkers, political players, and people who understood the man and the times gathered to discuss the art, the man, and the times.

This painting by Thomas will now exist on canvas and in contextual video commentary to be passed on through the ages.

The hope is that the film will create a desire to see the painting, which will generate a desire to learn more about the man DK Duncan, which would create a desire to understand more about Jamaica in the 1970s.

Dr Nadiya Figueroa moderated the evening. In attendance was Beverley Manley Duncan, Donna Duncan Scott, Imani Duncan Price, Patricia Sutherland, Adtelligent CEO Craig Powe and documentarian Joelle Powe, grandchildren of DK, human rights lawyer Hugh Small and his brother lawyer Richard Small, Professor Emeritus Dr Carolyn Cooper, art aficionado Pat Ramsay, artist John Campbell, film-maker Storm Saulter, Professor Emeritus and Garvey scholar Dr Rupert Lewis, gallery owner Douglas Reid, art historians and dealers Gilou Bauer and Susanne Fredricks, film producer Justine Henzell, director of Jamaican Music Museum Herbie Miller, writer and film-maker Summer Eldemire, art historian Dr Petrina Dacres, National Museum Director Jonathan Greenland, former Executive Director of the Economic Growth Council Maureen Denton, communication strategist Rajae Danvers, young artists Greg Bailey, Kimani Beckford, Camille Chedda, Oneika Russell, and of course the artist of the evening, Phillip Thomas.

The contemplation and subsequent discussion of the work of art was lively and engaging. Look out for the documentary later this year. The film will highlight how a work of art yields itself to multiple interpretations, which may or may not be what the artist intended. The painting is an end itself and a point of departure for reflection and revelations about who we are as Jamaicans.

— T Nevada Powe