Wifredo Lam (1902-1982)

Wifredo Lam was a fascinating artist, a truly cosmopolitan figure who eluded any fixed categorization while interwined personal and artistic contacts with all the most important Western avant-gardes of the Twentieth Century.

Born in Cuba to a Chinese father and a mother from African descent, throughout his life he retained elements of his cultural background in his practice, infusing them with the influence he got from different sources. His artistic evolution is aptly narrated by an exquisite retrospective exhibition that started in Paris in September 2015 before moving to Madrid from April to mid-August 2016, where I travelled last week to visit it.

Portrait of Lam-Yam [father], 1922, Pencil on paper. Self-portrait, 1926, Graphite on paper.

The exhibition is organised in five chronological sections that well display the developement of Lam’s highly individual style. The first section covers the early years of his life (1923-1938), his artistic studies in La Habana and Madrid, where he at first he applied a naturalistic approach to painting and drawing. Progressively though, he distanced himself from academic conventions and started to draw inspiration from the highly innovative works of Matisse first, and Picasso slightly later. His artistic life cannot be separated by the personal and historical events that were occurring in those years in Spain. Fully supportive of the Republican cause, after witnessing the death of his young wife and one-year-old son by starvation, he joined the fight against Francisco Franco’s authoritarian aims. Through his paintings, worked out on paper rather than on canvas, he gives us a vivid description on this period characterized by the struggle for life, violence and hunger.

Questo slideshow richiede JavaScript.

Document medley.

With the victory of Franco’s party, Lam and his friends fled to Paris and then Marseille in 1938. Between this year and 1941, Wifredo befriended many intellectuals and artists who were to bear a huge impact on his style and career, and who would remain his friends throughout his life. He particularly became close to Picasso, who shared with him an interest in the different African masquerade traditions, and André Breton, the main theorist of Surrealims. In this period he became fascinated with techniques of automatic production and collaborated with the Surrealist group to many joint works, some of which are displayed in the exhibition. He also developed the theme of the Femme cheval, a dreamlike hybrid figure in between a woman and a horse that is the best example of the Surrealist influence on his creativity. In 1941 Lam fled Marseille and visited Martinique along with Breton. Here, he got the chance to meet Aimé Césaire, poet of Négritude, who shared his negative views on racial and cultual domination.

 

In 1942, after twenty years, Lam went back to Cuba and lived and worked there until 1952. This is commonly accepted as the period of his artistic maturity. This exhibition in particular sheds a new light on his relationship with the Cuban political establishment. Although an advocate of revolution and socialism, Lam never officially bound himself to any political party, retaining his individual freedom of thought beyond all attempts to categorize him as a Marxist. His artistic production in Cuba focused on giving voice to a distinctive Cuban identity that was the original outcome of the fusion of cultural elements from all over the world, from China to West Africa, from Europe to the Americas. Many symbolic features conveyed this message and combined it to an harsh comment on social inequalities and exploitation. The jungle in particular became the preferred theme, representing both the place where to escape slavery and where to worship the ancient Yoruba gods that arrived to the New World during the centuries of the transatlantic slave trade. Also basing his visions on the work of his anthropologists friends Lydia Cabrera and Fernando Ortiz, he claimed for Cuba a variegated cultural background that appropriated elements of different traditions into a unique form that was to be preserved from the influence of the West. In this view, it is certainly a pity that his masterpiece, La Jungla (The Jungle, 1943) was not there to behold.

La fruta bomba [La Papaye], 1944. Oil on canvas.

In 1952, Lam left Cuba to dwell in Paris and until 1967 he travelled often to deliver shows in different locations all around the globe, from Caracas to Zurich, from New York to Stockholm. Around this time he started his artistic brotherhood with Asger Jorn and the CoBrA collective, sharing with them an interest in spontaneity, teamwork and popoular art. His style was evolving into simpler lines and forms and the dreamlike yet strong flavour of his drawings fit perfectly the work of different poets, such as Luca Ghérasim, whose lyrical project Lam illustrated.

Bélial, empereur des mouches, 1948. Oil on canvas.

From 1954, Wifredo and his family settled in Albisola Marina in Liguria, Italy, invited by Jorn who also lived there and was experimenting with terra cotta. It was Jorn who introduced him to this extremely protean medium through which Lam informed some 300 artworks in 1975. In the last twenty years of his life, his tireless artistic wit never slowed down, as well as his wanderings: He visited Egypt, India, Thailand, Mexico, expanding his collection of non-Western art, and he worked to the autobiographical project Le Nouveau Monde de Wifredo Lam, while getting more and more international recognition. Wifredo Lam died in his home in Paris aged 80, just after completing his latest series of engravings.

Questo slideshow richiede JavaScript.

With more than four hundred objects on display paintings, drawings, photographs, letters, reviews and rare books, this exhibition succeeds in conveying the impression of a full, dynamic life, framed by long-lasting friendships and high ideals. The syncretism of his practice defies common notions of centre and periphery, placing this poliedric artist at the centre of Modern Art in a global rather than Western perspective.

…Feels like worth seeing it? You won’t have to rush to Madrid, because Wifredo Lam will be on display at Tate Modern from 14 September 2016 to 8 January 2017 (Adult ticket: £16, Concession: £14). No excuses.

Useful links:

Centre Pompidou exhibition page (Paris): https://www.centrepompidou.fr/cpv/resource/cbyd4kE/rbydeKb

Museo Nacional Reina Sofia exhibition page (Madrid): http://www.museoreinasofia.es/en/exhibitions/wifredo-lam-0

Tate Modern exhibition page (London): http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/ey-exhibition-wifredo-lam

 

The Conformist

Helen Bullock, Window installation.

Set in the very central Belmacz space, The Conformist is truly an unusual show, linking modern to contemporary artists, as well as art itself to fashion and jewellery design. Main theme of the exhibition is the question on conformity/deviance, and its declination through the passing of time. The twenty-one artists included share a reflection on the moral and aesthetic codes of Western society. Their works are the result of this creative thinking, and they can be of the most different register, from serious to playful, form ironic to melanchonic, from sharp to mellow. Here’s just a taste of what you will find if you go to visit it.

Helen Bullock, coming from textile design, has created a window installation characterised by strong colours, as well as a floor decoration for the lower ground. Her vivid contribution, featuring red brush strokes on the window, torn textile with a floreal (or phallic?) allusion, handmade bracelets and a long knotted cloth hanging from the ceiling is instrumental in driving the viewer inside the exhibition space.

The curator and artist Paul Kindersley has chosen two main sites of inspiration: the first is In Youth is Pleasure (1945), a novel by Denton Welch, a worn copy of which is available to flicker through, dealing with the sensual fantasies and erotic experiences of an obsessive teenager during a non-specified summertime. The second is the flamoboyant figure of Lady Emma Hamilton (1765-1815), well-known for her extravagance and a symbol of Romantic love because of her wretched love affair with Lord Nelson (1758-1805). Her presence is announced to be the red thread of the exhibition since entering the gallery: She enigmatically beams from an etching (copy of a painting by the portraitis George Romney), her head covered with a pure-white veil. Exactly in front of her, Helen Chadwick’s Ruin (1986) parallels an interest in the body as main agent of conformation or not to the mainstream of aesthetics. The late artist’s naked body, in contrast with Emma’s covered attire, twists in an unconfortable yet intriguing pose, while with her left hand she covers her face from direct eye-contact with the viewer, and rests the right hand on a skull, probably referencing Shakespeare. Behind her, a still-image of  fruit decomposition completes the work, where the artist is both photographer and photographed, maker and object, in a game of attraction-repulsion with the viewer that challenges the Platonic conception of beauty as positive attribute.

Two video installations, one by Kindersley himself (Lady Hamilton’s Attitudes, 2014), one by Julie Verhoeven (Phlegm & Fluff, 2015), make use of the body too in addressing, in different ways, questions of genre, sex, perversity, grotesque. I found that watching each of them with the relevant soundtrack, while the other was in silent mode, would give a completely different atmosphere to the entire exhibition. Interesting how different music enables diverse emotional responses to the same space.

Works by David Parkinson.

The exhibition also features some charming pieces of jewelry, like the sophisticated gold string with charms by Julia Muggenburg recalling again Lady Emma in its ancient style. Roman coins, red coral, black pearls and citrine drops, as suggested by James Cahill in his introduction to the exhibition, recall different aspects of Lady Emma’s personality, while the string itself let us face an ambiguity – chastity belt or erotic ankle necklace?

I find The Conformist an interesting experiment of mixing fields. It is imaginative and witty. I won’t steal the pleasure of surprise by giving away too much of it! If you are looking for a fresh, nonconformist show, visit The Conformist at Belmacz show room, until 16th April 2016. Entry is free.

Useful links: http://www.belmacz.com/gallery/

All pictures credits: http://www.belmacz.com/gallery/current

Paul Housley, Head of an English Iconoclast, 2016, glazed painted clay, 8x14x20cm.

Annie Leibovitz’s WOMEN

This morning I got the chance to know (East) London a bit more and I patiently waited for the Overground to take me to Wapping. This maritime borough hosts the latest travelling exhibition by U.S. photographer Annie Leibovitz, WOMEN: New Portraits. Starting off as a photojournalist, Annie (born 1949) has gained international recognition since the 1970s, specialising in portraits. She has worked for Rolling Stone and Vogue among others, producing some of the most famous pictures in the Western popular culture.

Wapping Hydraulic Power Station

The WOMEN project was born some fifteen years ago, as the joint effort by Annie and the writer and activist Susan Sontag (1933-2004) to help women empowerment within contemporary society. The “update” I visited today actually deals mainly with portraits of famous women mainly coming from the U.S., whether by birth or education.
The arrangement of the display is very interesting. A former hydraulic power station gives an unusual the setting for the exhibition. Only a few photographs are actually pinned on a wide board in the main room, each of them carrying a biographical note on the subject, which helps situating her in contemporary history. However, I found the script to be quite small and difficult to read because of the natural light reflecting from the plexiglass.

Most of the works instead are displayed on two maxi-screens made up by different tv screens assembled together. Therefore, the images can result out of their axis at times, which cripples the quality of the experience. Moreover, the choice of video display doesn’t allow the viewer to behold a picture for as long as one wishes, and even if you wanted to wait for that same image to come back on the screen, you would wait at length because the queued works are so many!

Nevertheless, I loved the portraits as motivational pieces for everyone in the world towards gender equality, and the evolving notions of respect and self-consciousness during time. They also help people to get into contact with powerful female figures in today’s world, some of whom I wasn’t aware of. Maybe it is not surprising, but I felt more interested in the portraits of those women I didn’t know rather than in the familiar and almost always present figures of, just to pick two, Aung San Suu Kyi and Adele.

Annie Leibovitz, Alice Waters and her daughter Fanny Singer, Hillview Farms, Gillette, New Jersey, 2015.

Annie Leibovitz, Cindy Sherman, New York City, 2012.

At any rate (passing over my personal ignorance), as mentioned all of the women portrayed for this new part of the project are somehow rich and famous, apart from Denise Manong, who deals with AIDS in South Africa. I do not know whether this was the artist’s intention or it was so by will of the commissioning Swiss finance firm UBS. This interest is only partly mitigated by a few pictures coming from the older part of the project, featuring four unknown casino dancers both in their costumes and as they appear in their daily life (many photos for the original project also had an important commissioner, e.g. Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of American Vogue).

Overall the experience is enjoyable and enables some critical questions. What is the role of the woman nowadays? What makes a woman? How many stereotypes have been deconstructed, how many are still common? Is the dualism male – female a cultural tag? The foreword to the exhibition by feminist Gloria Steinem vividly paints an holistic approach to humanity and its affairs – I like to think that the ex-hydraulic power station was chosen as a metaphor of the fresh use that we can give to old, worn concepts. From the backwall of the exhibition space, as suspended between past and present, the still image of Queen Elizabeth II in her White Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace towers on all the other all-shifting portraits, sending a somewhat ironic yet politically strong message.

And then, is photography art? Can we capture something of an individual’s personality from these mere instants? A bonus point is that the exhibition comes with no gift shop, giving some relief from having to pass through the commodified versions of these exquisite portraits. Instead, visitors can enter a second, smaller room furnished with a big wooden table, 1900 lamps and some very cosy armchairs, where you can enjoy browsing thorugh plenty of old and new catalogues of Annie’s work, as well as Cartier-Bresson’s and Cindy Sherman’s.

The exhibition space.

WOMEN: New Portraits is on until February 7th at
Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, Wapping Wall, London E1W .
Opening Times: from Monday to Sunday 10:00 – 18:00, except on Friday 10:00 – 20:00.
Entrance is free and there is no booking required.

Useful links:
UBS official exhibition page: www.ubs.com/microsites/annie-leibovitz/en/tour/london