| Artist: | Lam, Wilfredo |
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|---|---|---|
| Title of Work: | The Jungle | |
| Date of Work: | 1943 | |
| Nationality: | Cuban | |
| Context: | Latin American Modernism | |
| Movement: | Revisionist Primativism | |
| Medium: | Oil | |
| Subject: works the "primitive" from an indigenist (native) perspective; Lam "drew upon the marvelous primitive within himself," said Breton. Instead of appropriating the "primitive Other," Lam draws on his own native traditions and culturally diverse Afro-Cuban heritage. Here he paints from Caribbean sources of inspiration: its tropical landscape, "exotic" religious rituals (his godmother was a practicing priestess-healer of the Afro-Cuban religion known as Santeria), voodoo, and ethnic diversity. He ends up integrating a European modernist style with Caribbean content and sources. Redefines the "primitive" from an insider point of view. Style: through his European connections, he was well aware of Cubism and Picasso's primitivism, as well as Surrealism; he draws on all three here, but he also goes beyond his European models. Lam combines the experimental, abstract aesthetics of the European avant-garde with a content meaningful to his own native culture. Context: son of a Chinese father and a European-African mother (a mulatto), Lam physically embodied and actively demonstrated the multicultural heritage of the New World. His mixed ancestry reflects the African cultural diaspora or displacement of colonized people to Europe and the New World. The contributions of artists of color often get overlooked and obscured by the one-sided power relationship that characterizes First World and Third World politics. Lam reclaims spiritual traditions, myths, and images of his own indigenous culture, which he integrates with aesthetic styles and issues of the avant-garde in a successful multicultural synthesis. It is a good case study of cultural self-definition and the cross-currents of modernism. Lam is the intermediary between an Old World of formulist modernism and a New World of primitivist-indigenist modernism. | ||
