L'Incredulità di Tomaso

The standard narrative of the Micah Carpentier myth is one that describes a relentless artistic renegade whose prickly reconfiguration of the European avant-garde tradition single-handedly refitted Caribbean modernism for generations to come. From the 1963 exhibiton El Terror de los Lápices where Carpentier stunned the public with a series of mural-sized canvases depicting the Eucharist to his 1970 collaboration with the young, off-beat Frenchman Currado Malaspina to his final triumphant 1973 Song of Degrees, Carpentier has never been far from the vortex of Latin American innovation.

Micah Carpentier examining one of his 1677 paper bag drawings, Havana, 1973 (Courtesy of the Micah Carpentier Foundation, Madrid)

What is less well known is the fact that Carpentier was an avid traditionalist and a life long student of nature and light. Though publicly he maintained the strict unwavering demeanor of a radical subversive, privately he carried himself with a tender and graceful humility. In his native city of Baracoa not far from Guantanamo Bay, (Carpentier is 1/8 Taíno on his grandmother's side which may explain his deep crepuscular eyes),  my uncle would spend hours painting small, delicate watercolors of the surrounding area.

Untitled watercolor, Micah Carpentier 1968

He kept these works secret, not wishing to undermine his reputation as an unforgiving advocate for what was known in his day as El arte avanzada, or "the advanced art." And yet these recently discovered works have a unique charm, an almost confectionery delectablity that is unmistakably intimate, accessible and unpretentious.

And so in spite of the fact that I am supposed to prefer the tawdry insolence of the paper bags my sentimental conventional heart leans toward these light lovely scherzi, these colorful impressions of the provinces that so profoundly evoke the rooted ancestral life of common people doing ordinary things.

So while I defer to the experts and recognize, at least intellectually, that my uncle Micah was an important innovator and an influential regional figure, I have to confess that I find the whole paper bag thing to be a steaming toad stool of paparruchas.

from The Song of Degrees, mixed media on paper bag, Micah Carpentier, 1971