A Unique Slant of Light: The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana - (Page 403)

BROR ANDERS WIKSTROM (b. 1854, Sweden – d. 1909, New York, New York) Krewe of Proteus: The Yellow Dwarf, 1900 Watercolor on paper; 17 x 20 in. Carnival Collection, Louisiana Research Collection, Tulane University CARNIVAL DESIGN the standards of Carnival’s golden age in the nineteenth century. Accolades must also attend those anonymous maskers whose imagination appears boundless and whose costumes spare no detail. All of which begs the question: what exactly is Carnival as a creative idiom, and why is it important? Although its resonance is obviously atavistic and archetypal, harking to the ancient rituals and mythologies that linger in the recesses of collective memory, there is scant understanding of its true nature and function as an art form. One scholar who has devoted much time and energy to advancing this discussion is Claire Tancons, a native of the French Caribbean department of Guadeloupe. An internationally active New Orleans-based curator who co-curated the Prospect.1 Biennial, Tancons describes the carnival procession as “the opera of the streets, a form of structured and driven psychogeography. It is a prime unifying display mode of creative acts in public space. Processions are to streets what exhibitions are to museums and plays to theatre, and beyond their obvious artistic content, they speak to an aesthetics of the commons.” And that sums it up. For cities still inhabited by the spirits of place, as New Orleans clearly is, Mardi Gras is a quintessential mode of expression. 403  http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=1378 http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=1378

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A Unique Slant of Light: The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana

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