Labeled "Leeteg the Legend" by James Michener and Often Called the "American Gauguin" Edgar Leeteg was the father of black velvet art and the genesis of a genre continuing today with the tiki and Polynesian pop art movement, nearly 70 years later. Describing himself as a "fornicating, gin-soaked, dope-head," Leeteg took on the elite of the art establishment of Honolulu Academy of Arts in 1938 and shamed them in the press. Always the shrewd...