A Moment of Tiki: Black Velvet, if you please
Let's talk about Leeteg and Tyree
Black velvet art is one of the staple items of decor found in home and commercial tiki bars alike. In this episode of A MOMENT OF TIKI I look at two of the most influential artists who excelled at this form and captured striking, dramatic images from the South Pacific on black velvet: Edgar Leeteg and Ralph Burke Tyree. Leeteg essentially created the genre, relocating to Tahiti in the 1930s as he painted (and bedded) as many of the local women he could whilst drinking and fighting when he wasn't wielding his paint brush. Tyree came to the Pacific later, homing his artistic skills as a U.S. Marine stationed on American Samoa during World War II. Together (although they never met) the two artists created a lasting legacy that holds sway over tiki culture to this day. Author C.J. Cook has thoroughly documented the lives of these men in his books, "Leeteg: Babes, Bars, Beaches and Black Velvet Art," and "Tyree: Artist of the South Pacific." Exhaustively researched with extensive interviews of surviving family members and packed with archival photographs and, yes, artworks from the masters themselves, these books are easily the best ever published on these seminal figures. Both are available through South Pacific Dreams Publishing.