Wifredo Lam

Ahh Wifredo Lam. The Father of Caribbean Art. And who doesn't love a little bit of voodoo to spice up their life? Lam has been a huge influence on me since the first slide Dr. Moran showed us of The Jungle back in Caribbean Art. I literally connected with the subject matter in a way I never have before as a student, and since then, my life has changed. Please enjoy my elevated venacular in describing specifically how Wifredo Lam inspires me as an artist.

The Chair

Wifredo Lam

I don’t know how I could look into Caribbean art without drawing inspiration from the Caribbean’s most famous artist, Wifredo Lam. Especially given that my heritage is primarily Cuban and Lam is a Cuban artist who embraced his Afro-Cuban heritage in his artwork. Lam’s hybrid figures definitely catch the eye, but not only are they bizarre and abstract, but they tie Lam back to his spiritual and cultural roots. In his travels as an artist, Lam himself was inspired by some of my own favorite artists, including Henry Matisse. Through the sense of surrealism he adapted in his travels and studies, he returned to Havana to create his art. His work reached out to the common man of his culture making his concepts heavily accessible and wildly popular in his subject matter, which often included elements of Voodoun, as in The Chair.

Wifredo Lam floors me. His style, his color, the clever use of motifs. His pieces are like puzzles, you can look at them over and over and find something new about the piece almost every time without failure. Some of his pieces are super complex, like The Jungle, which distorts human body parts to blend in with the chaotic scenery of the jungle. Other pieces are simpler in appearance, but just as heavy in motif, such as Satan. Most of his pieces involve voodoun motifs, some of which are subtle, and some of which stare straight at you. For example, The Chair distorts the motif of the stool into a European chair, not only hiding the real purpose of the painting, but showing a true hybrid between European and ancient Caribbean art. It’s that combination that intrigues me the most as an artist. Caribbean art has fascinated me for a long time, and when I took the course a year or so ago, I knew it was a subject matter I felt a deep connection to and that I wanted to pursue it however I could. I come from a Catholic family line and personally don’t get into voodoo or Santeria, but their motifs fascinate me none the less. Because I have a family line of wealthy Spaniards mixing with natives along the way, I fee a draw to the European-native style that is so common in Caribbean art. And as the father of that style, Wifredo Lam has already influenced me a great deal.

The Jungle

Satan

Along with his style of mixing cultural and stylistic differences in his art, Lam explores a variety of texture in his work. Although his primary medium of choice was gouche, I really admire his use of paint in his paintings. Especially in The Jungle, he uses texture to disguise body parts and make them blend with the foliage, and he also uses it to make specific parts pop so that you see a lot of feet, bare butts, and an occasional breast. At first glance, there’s a sense of pattern in his work, and I will be honored and beside myself if I can accomplish his use of pattern and surrealism to keep his view captivated by his work. I want my work to come together like his and stand out as a Caribbean piece. And I want to show my respect for those artists before me the way that Lam has in putting his own spin on what was ultimately a Pablo Picasso style of art (who was, after all, the largest source of his influence).

Alley, Ronald. Wifredo Lam. The MoMA Online. The Oxford Press. 2009. Web. 3 August 2011. <http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=3349>.