Abstract

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Painting out of his own history: ‘American’ Influences in Geoffrey Holder’s Creolized Art

– Marsha Pearce

This chapter reconsiders the boundaries of the term “American,” in its exploration of work by Geoffrey Holder, an artist born in the Caribbean but with lived experiences that situated him fluidly across spaces of the New World or the Americas. Through a close reading of Holder’s mural created for the Trinidad Hilton Hotel in the 1960s—a context shaped by questions of self-representation, in a move toward the island’s independence from Britain—the chapter demonstrates how the artist attends to his image making by drawing on several sources to produce a work characterized by aesthetic encounters. This visual analysis is framed by a theory of creolization, specifically what Stuart Hall describes as a “présence américaine” /  anAmerican presence—a feature that distinguishes a process of creolization. The chapter argues that in painting out of his own history, Holder makes work that is born of an awareness and embeddedness in transnational experiences. It opens up the term “American” and expands its significance beyond associations with the United States. America is understood as a broader territory marked by contact with peoples and cultures from various parts of the world. Holder’s art is posited as creolized—as a nuanced product of American influences. As part of this enquiry, attention is given to Holder’s representation of Blackness and its imbrication with an aesthetic multiplicity.