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.

Gauguin @ MUDEC Milan

Paul Gauguin, Arearea no varua ino (Words of the Devil or Reclining Tahitian Women), 1894, oil on canvas, 60 × 98 cm, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen. Credits: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gauguin_Arearea_no_varua_ino.jpg

Here we come to the end of the first year for Diotima in the Gallery! What a perfect occasion to close with a post that in some ways brings me back to my origins…

I have been so lucky to get a week off from the Christmastime frenzy in London and I happily reached Milan, Italy, for a week of pleasures. One of these was certainly my visit to the MUDEC (Museo delle Culture, i.e. Museum of Cultures). In contrast with its old-fashioned name, MUDEC is set in a very contemporary space by architect David Chipperfield and hosts a plethora of events and exhibitions so that it has already become a centre of Milan’s cultural life. Considering that the opening was just in Summer 2015, I must say the amount of happenings that have already taken place at MUDEC is quite amazing.

I went there to visit the exhibition regarding Gauguin and I definitely recommend it. Entitled “Gauguin, Tales from Paradise”, it displays not only paintings but also some magnificent wood carvings as well as pottery and zincographs by the artist. Some paintings by Cézanne, Pisarro, Van Gogh are on display too in order to emphasize differences and similarities within the artists.

The aim of the curators was to tell a story of the different places visited by Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), an artist who always escaped defining tags. Through his work, the visitor can come into contact with many regions of the world, very distant and different from each other: In his restless artistic search, Gauguin explored in fact Brittany, Denmark, Paris and Arles, as well as Martinique, Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands. Gauguin was keen on drawing material form other cultures to use in his work, in an artistic synthesis that ended up being something very different from the Impressionist style to which he was associated at first.

The developement of the exhibition, divided in five sections, shows this metamorphosis of  Gauguin’s style neatly. It also underlines the importance of Gauguin as an indefinable figure, who always pushed the limits of art convention. He approached Primitivism in his own original way, creating works that leave behind the European, “civilised” artistic conventions and enclose the most disparate elements, from everyday life to dreams to local myths. In his practice, we can appreciate a fusion of real, symbolic and decorative, a fusion operated by the artist’s mind through abstraction. No wonder that his work deeply influenced Picasso and the Cubism movement, Matisse and the Fauves. I could actually stretch his influence to the Surrealists without doubt.

Paul Gauguin, Arii Matamoe (The Royal End), 1892, Oil on coarse fabric, 45,1 x 74,3 cm, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Credits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Paul_Gauguin_(French_-_Arii_Matamoe_(The_Royal_End)_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

Most of the artworks displayed come from the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek of Copenhagen, being the first time they are shown all together outside their usual setting. The choice of lights and materials for display reflect the importance given to Gauguin’s relationship with Primitivism: low lights, ground red or night blue reed mats and wooden cases are disposed to create a labyrinth where, as you turn the next corner, you enter a new level of understanding of Gauguin’s revolutionary originality. I must say I found it a bit disorienting and at first didn’t follow the intended path, but on the other hand I’ve always had a very bad sense of direction…

The museum doesn’t allow to take pictures so I had to use the ones available from the Internet. The show includes some famous masterpieces, however the real revelation are the wood carvings, little jewels to enjoy maybe for the first time. Don’t miss this chance if you find yourself nearby!

Paul Gauguin, Pape moe (Mysterious water), 1894, Painted Oak, 81,5 x 62 x 5 cm, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. Credits: http://www.glyptoteket.com/press-release/the-glyptotek-recieves-a-donation-of-a-work-by-gauguin

Paul Gauguin, Hina and Fatu, c. 1892, Carved Tamanu Wood, Height: 32,71 cm, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Credits:http://arttattler.com/archivepaulgauguin.html

Gauguin, Tales from Paradise
Until February 21st 2016
MUDEC, via Tortona 56, Milano, Italy
Tickets: 12,00 € Full, 10,00 € Reduced

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Useful links:

MUDEC Exhibition page: http://www.mudec.it/eng/gauguin/
An article on MUDEC by Politecnico di Milano International Business School’s Blog: http://www.growingleader.com/mudec-the-cultural-exhibition-center-opens-in-milan/

Hassan Musa and the mis-connections within artworlds

Hassan Musa, I have a drone (Obama’s portrait), 2014, textiles,
241 × 247.5 cm. Image credits: Galerie Maïa Muller, Paris.

Some nights ago I had the chance to meet Dr. Hassan Musa at SOAS, where he held a conference on the “Mis-connections in contemporary artworlds”. Here is an account of his speech plus the thoughts I flowered mixing this experience with my visit at the 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair, a couple of weeks ago.

Dr. Musa was born in Sudan in 1951 and now dwells in the South of France. He is an artist, or as he prefers to call himself, an image-maker drawing from a variety of traditions: His most famous works are textiles, linking him with the Sudanese practice of hanging cloths on walls for decorative purposes. He nevertheless uses images from the European painting tradition, and combines them with a witty political discourse conveyed through icons of contemporary times, such as Osama Bin Laden, Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin and so on. He also makes use of elements of Arabic calligraphy as well as Chinese watercolour. All these references are finally tied together by his original research within the technical dimension of the chosen medium.

Valuing curiosity as one of the most important factors in a viewer, Musa feels the technical dimension as a space of total freedom where he can experiment and get to always new ways of fascinating the audience. His use of transparent pieces of fabric, overlapped, glued and finally sewn together is truly skilful; it gives birth to amazing pieces where the delicacy of the medium contrasts with the strong message conveyed by the painstakingly created image.

Hassan Musa, I love you with my Iphone, 2011, assembled textiles, 290 x 255cm. Image credits: Galerie Pascal Polar, Brussels.

Interestingly, Hassan contends that nowadays an artist can be vitually anything: There is no proper definition to apply to this term, which has such a disparate application that it has become extremely vague. An artist could be a traditional painter, but also someone involved in a performance of any kind, from a quasi-teathrical installation to a man who let his friend shoot him in the arm, like Chris Burden in Shoot (1971). Therefore Hassan’s preference for the more specific “image-maker” tag. However, if we really want to be specific, even the latter contains a mis-connection: Seeing is certainly a political problem, as what I see may differ from what you see in the same object! An image-maker is thus entangled in a political discourse, in which (s)he will try to make us see what he sees – as in politics.

Not only a problem of terms, mis-connections travel also through the competition between different image-makers using the same image. The use Musa makes of the U.S. dollar, for example, is exquisitely ironic. Some others may nevertheless use that very dollar to create an opposite metaphor. For example:

Hassan Musa, Halal Flag, 2015, ink on textile, 95 × 142.5 cm. Image Credits: Galerie Maïa Muller, Paris.

Bci advert by McCann Erickson Advertising, Santiago, Chile. http://www.coloribus.com/adsarchive/prints/bci-dollar-8974905/

Hassan is not the first to lament the double conception of history held by the Western culture: Europeans in particular tend to consider the rest of the world as if it didn’t have a history comparable to the one of their geographic region. This bias leads us to see other places as “barbarian”, immerse in a lack of history that is a permanent stagnation. It is easy to spot that this is particulary true in the case of the African continent. Following this view, the advent of European colonialism was a positive event, a fresh start, the redemption of backwards peoples now sharing modernity with and thanks to the magnanimous Europeans… Far from being true, this colonial discourse does not take into account that there is no modernity without freedom. In Musa’s elaboration of the theme, there are therefore two kinds of modernity: the European modernity, embued with colonialist bias; the local modernity, coloured by nationalistic discourses.

However, after the fall of the Berlin wall, Europeans started to question themselves about identity; in the globalized world, we realised that we all share the same destiny. I definitely agree with Musa when he says that the importance given to identity nowadays is the fulcrum of the absurd attempt to categorize artists by their regional origin. So does a fair like 1:54, especially dedicated to “African” art. But the question arises spontaneously and quite simply: What is African art? Or even better: Is there actually something that we can call “African art”? If a Sudanese artist lives and works in France for most of his life, do we still call the result of his artistic effort “African art”?

Youssef Ouchra, Ma Taaboudoun, 2015, painetd and cut metal, 88-58 cm. Galerie Venise Cadre Casablanca (GVCC), Casablanca.

I think 1:54 is an interesting example of this mis-connection originated by the identity issue. To some extent it also helps another one of the mis-connections Hassan pointed out during his conference: the trauma mis-connection, or the expectation for African artists to have experienced some kind of emotional shock on their arrival to Europe. This organises African art under an umbrella of psychological distress that is completely misleading, and unifies what is in fact a reality of scattered and variegated identities. I can concede that many image-makers nowadays are troubled with the urbanization issue, with all the links to themes like poverty, alienation, technology, pollution, etc. However, this is true not only of artists of African origin – it is a problem that concerns sensible people anywhere. The Contemporary African Art Fair held during the second week of October at Somerset House hosted many works dealing with this theme. But it also gave (rightly) space to other themes. In fact, it is the variety of themes, medias, galleries and artists that makes up the good side of 1:54. Musa strongly affirmed that artists are very individualistic, unless of course they are part of a political discourse – and in that case, most probably, their work is being used to serve someone else’s scope.

Paa Joe and Jacob Tetteh-Ashong, Coffin- Pepsi Bottle , 2015, wood, acrylic, and interior fabric, 112 × 51 × 51 cm. Art Twenty One Gallery, Lagos.

This leads us to the last two mis-connections Hassan dealt with at SOAS. First, the diaspora mis-connection, which allows critics to put together all black-skinned artists, no matter where they come from and what their experience is. Second, the curator mis-connection, as curators often are both agents and victims of the other mis-connections considered above. As a result, it is very common to see exhibitions displaying works by artists that come from the most different parts of Africa – grouped together only by the fact that the authors are Africans. As Hassan bitterly remarked, curators often serve their own interests, becoming the real artists behind an exhibition. Curiously enough, a curator is not only someone in charge of a collection, but also, by the law, “a guardian of a minor, lunatic, or other incompetent, especially with regard to his or her property” (see: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/curator).

Qubeka Bead Studio, Mpelaveai (End of the week), 2015, glass seed beads on board, 110 x 75 cm. Qubeka Bead Studio, Cape Town.

Art is individual, it is about the singularity of the person. “Africa” is not a good category, neither politically speaking, nor aesthetically, nor philosophically – it is simply a geographic area. The simplicity by which Hassan reminded us that there are no real borders, just political, superimposed, artificial ones, struck me. The question is not, therefore, “Is there an ‘African’ art?” but: What could be a better working term?

Sokari Douglas Camp CBE, Walworth Ladies, 2008, steel, 50 x 17 x 18 cm. October Gallery, London.

Hassan Musa is African as an individual. Nevertheless, he was raised in the European art tradition, because, as he puts it, there is no other History of Art as a discipline. Therefore, he is not an African artist. As Picasso used elements of African art and culture, Musa heavily relies on elements from traditional European paintings. His project as an art-maker clearly unfolds a political dimension. Remaining very realist, he acknowledges that art can’t change the world. But at least it can offer some consolation.

To take the chance and get some relief, you can visit Hassan’s latest solo exhibition in Paris, Yo Mama, at Galerie Maïa Muller, until Nov. 28th.

Hassan Musa, Le tableau qui fait dialoguer les Cultures,
2008, assembled textiles, 207 x 236cm. Image credits: Galerie Pascal Polar, Brussels.

Useful links:

On Hassan Musa:

Web Site: http://hassanmusa.com/pdf/biography.pdf

Resume: http://hassanmusa.com/pdf/biography.pdf

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/hassanmusaonline/

Exhibition in Paris: http://www.galeriemaiamuller.com/index.php?idr=7

On 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair: http://1-54.com/london/

Hidden Visions

Last week I had the opportunity to visit an interesting project held in Chealsea, in a sunny room of the Old Town Hall. Held together by the mysterious name of “Hidden Visions”, a display of pictures, paintings, drawings, sculputures  dealt with the subtle issue of how the artists involved see, feel, fight and accept their mental illness.

The exhibition was ideated by Elizabeth Vartanian Collier, a smart SOAS student who made an effort to look for funds and to gather the artists in this artistic symposium. I admire her tenacity and patience in setting up the objects in the space given, which was quite limited. She disposed of the art objects grouping the by author, accompanying them with a brief label on each artist. The result was a linear path through different materials and mediums, very interesting already in its own right. The human side of the works was very touching too. All the works, as it appears, bear a substrate of pain, of incredible tension. Nevertheless they sometimes are playful, and many of them left me with an impression of strong vitality. I particularly appreciated the set of pictures which included auto-portaits of the artist Maeve Buckenham. Her works showed an almost surprising introspectiveness. Sometimes she plays with her medium in a way that makes her portrait melt with her surroundings, as in a strive to recreate that sense of fulfillment, of totality, that we all are looking for, in the end. In fact, all the works are in some way a reflection upon ourselves, upon our own illness. Another artist, Bethany Lamont, used paper from a school copybook to write down how she feels about herself and her illness. At first sight you would see a page full of colours, with shiny stickers, pencil drawings – a lively collage that, to a closer look, reveals the state of mind that the artists feels, a state of otherness, of melancholia for a place she has “never been to”. I also appreciated the self-portrait by Miranda Chance, another SOASian, reminiscent of some works by Frida Kahlo, and yet stunning in its stateliness, emphasised also by the position in the exhibition.

I really enjoyed “Hidden Visions” mainly for two reasons: the first is the theme of the exhibition, a delicate issue to address, which I think was carried out in an original way. Looking at artworks made by people will mental illness may remind the visitor that these people suffer, that we know what is sufference and that the stigmatisation they often receive from society, from “normal” people, is mean and unjustified. The second reason is the admiration for how the artists and the curator, all very young, concurred in creating the show.  This was something very small and without too many claims for its importance, yet the experience of visiting it was fairly instructive, and I think a good exhibition should always be like that.

The show is now over but I am looking forward for another brilliant idea to be made into practice by lovely Lizzy Vartanian Collier, whom blog you can check in the meantime…

Useful links:

Elizabeth Vartanian Collier’s blog: http://gallerygirl.co/

Photographs of the exibition by Englis Monroe: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.687420438053704.1073741835.455558707906546&type=3

Chelsea Old Town Hall website: http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/venueschelsea/general/