The painter and sculptor Osmond Watson captured the stirring cultural transformations of postindependence Jamaica. Johnny Cool (1967) is an exercise in the brooding palette of blues and greens that recurs in Watson’s oeuvre. The portrait shows a young man posed casually before a dark, almost smoky blue-green backdrop. He sports a crisp blue polo with its buttons fastened, snugly tucked into a pair of trousers. Streetwise and self- possessed, he is a picture of boyish nonchalance. The prep flair of his outfit is consistent with the staples of the rude boy subculture that reverberated throughout Jamaica in the 1960s. The stark, stylised contours of his face and his lustrous complexion are characteristic of Watson’s style, hinting at his facility with sculpture. While the sitter’s expression withholds the details of his inner life, his bearing evinces his faith in the possibility of making a mark on the world through style.
This is the first time the work of Osmond Watson is presented at Biennale Arte.
—Ade J. Omotosho
