Wifredo Lam’s Profound Commentary On His Ancestral Roots
By Kassandra Lopez, Global Strategic Communications graduate student at the University of Florida
I chose to look into the work of Wilfredo Lam, not only am I fond of his skills and techniques, but I am a strong believer in the social commentary that he embedded in his work. It is readily accepted that his main goals were to represent the Afro- Cuban spirit and personify an embodiment of his own culture. Lam came in contact with some very reputable artist during his life, all of which may have influenced him into creating his exemplary and unique style.
Lam’s travels all throughout the world, and his personal journeys back to his ancestral lands are crucial and understanding how he came to his hybridized and complicated style. Throughout his life, he was often reminded of his mixed African and Spanish ancestry. The township where Lam grew up in, Sagua La Grande seems to be influential in his quest for Art, as they sponsored him to study and Europe. (Biography)
Lam’s educational stay in Europe, intended to last a year, spanned more than a decade, and he studied and was influenced by the masters of Spanish painting. Lam suffered a great loss of his first wife and child died of the disease due to tuberculosis. The suffering influenced his work, as a dark subject fell upon it. Lam was involved in the Spanish plight and subsequently aided in their rebellion. Lam’s time in Paris also contributed to his change in style and to his future endeavors, making them more relaxed and Parisian in nature.
Lam soon became involved with his future wife, his life and happiness improved. Lam began to mix with the big names in Art at the time, he was certainly influenced and began experimentation. Lam’s works changed and evolved as they were influenced by other artists. It is not until much later, when he settles back into Cuba that his ultimate style is arrived at. Lam became close to one of his sisters, involved in the voodoo practices of the area. There is no doubt that the ceremonies had an effect on his creative vision, as hundreds of paining subsequently held this subject. The ongoing subject reflected how the ceremonies had an effect on his creative vision. As hundreds of his subsequent works kept the same style.
The abstract forms that he painted and the hybridized figures are an undeniable nod to African Heritage. As they encompass the bulbous lines, and exaggerated attributes of such. Throughout the span of his life, he was very active in art circles. As such, Lam became involved with European artists, and Caribbean. Lam’s collaborations, with other Artist’s, kept his style current and on the cutting edge of the time.
Lam allowed himself to evolve but never forgot his roots, paying homage to them continuously, this echoes what Langston Hughes states in his “The negro artist and the racial mountain”, in that he is in remembrance of his roots. In a way this reflects the sentiments of Dubois in ‘Criteria for Negro art; as his art served a propaganda type purpose for his goals to expose the whitewashing of Cuban’s African rooted traditions.
Lam is commonly remembered for this use of hybridized figures as it can be likened to African art which often incorporates dysmorphic figures. Lam’s magnum opus, which I have attached. Is entitled to “The Jungle”. It is a unique piece that features polymorphism, yet it contrasts different details that come from humans, animals, and nature itself. The composition of the pieces very dense, creating these feelings of claustrophobia which makes the figures themselves very hard to differentiate. In Annie Paul’s “Contemporary Caribbean Art” she comments about how all these Caribbean rooted artists have exhaustively different backgrounds that contribute to their uniqueness.
The figures with their faces are masked, give off an air of suffering. Lam claims that the intention of this work was to make a commentary about the state of Cuba. Lam himself was very against the whitewashing of Cuban culture, and more specifically Santeria. Lam wanted to shed light, and he really did use this work, on how people were wiping away their traditions for the sake of tourism. It is absolutely beautiful, that his desire to describe the reality of his people is the work that he has most remembered for.
The Jungle, 1943
“..painted… two years after returning to his native Cuba from Europe, where he had been a member of the Surrealist movement. The work, “intended to communicate a psychic state,” Lam said, depicts a group of figures with crescent shaped faces that recall African or Pacific Islander masks, against a background of vertical, striated poles suggesting Cuban sugarcane fields. Together these elements obliquely address the history of slavery in colonial Cuba.” (MoMA
References
“Biography.” Wifredo Lam, www.wifredolam.net/en/biography.html.
Du, Bois W. E. B. Criteria of Negro Art. New York, NY: Crisis Pub. Co, 1926. Internet resource.
Hughes, Langston. “THE NEGRO ARTIST AND THE RACIAL MOUNTAIN.” The Langston Hughes
Review, vol. 4, no. 1, 1985, pp. 1–4. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26432664.
Lam, Wifredo. “Wifredo Lam The Jungle (La Jungla) 1943.” MoMA,
www.moma.org/collection/works/34666.
Mosaka, Tumelo, Annie Paul, and Nicollette Ramirez. Infinite Island: Contemporary Caribbean Art. New York: Brooklyn
Museum in association with Philip Wilson Publishers, 2007. Print.
