Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • Refusal of The Shadows

    Uploaded by

    Fernando Esquivel-Suarez
    18 views13 pages
    Richardson

    Original Title

    Refusal of the Shadows

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    PDF or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    Report this Document
    Richardson

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    18 views13 pages

    Refusal of The Shadows

    Uploaded by

    Fernando Esquivel-Suarez
    Richardson

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    of 13
    Refusal of the Shadow Surrealism and the Caribbean ane Edited by MICHAEL RICHARDSON Translated by KRZYSZTOF FIJAtKOWSKI and MICHAEL RICHARDSON Vv Lena Ne 3 Le Monde and (1968) et, 086.9, 8 peice staan’ the ative Lind Pierre Maaiite The Jungle (On the importance assumed by art criticism in the contemporary age T2235 ioe Pantin, to consider only thse, hve proliferated since the middle of the last century with such speed they constitute a substantial library. This proliferation has many causes. On the material level, would cite the increase in the number of fart magazines which goes hand in hand with an improved reproduction of pictures, thanks to modern mechanical methods. This technical progress allows a large publi to get to know works that were formerly Scattered and hidden away in distant museums and private collections. Tn the future this will hve profound repercussions for popular mass culture and will inevitably have an effect on painting itself Another, this time regretiable, aspect of the problem is that easel Painting has become a commodity submitted to unbridled speculation leading to an exploitation of producer and buyer. Public auctions have ‘become transformed into veritable stock exchanges where share indexes are fied. From the time monty was subjected to incessant fluctuations, ‘8 painting has been considered a safer investment than the banknote In this way capitalism pays involuntary homage to what its rational ization cannot produce. As a by-product of this art market, most criticism is scarcely different from other advertising literature: a seudo-philosophical vocabulary in which the emptiest words mingle With hyperbolic praise is the 2over for sordid mercantile schemes, Its ‘ot the least nauseating form of literary prostitution, The increase in criticism Has other, deeper reasons: painters, musi ‘sans, poets and philosophers feel the need to band together in groups ‘driven by a shared ideal and aiming ata common goal Such formations are characteristic of contemporary intllectualism, The Pre-Raphaelite 200 Refusal of the Shadow ‘brotherhood was. good example; realism has heen the most recent Such spiritual families offer the artista receptive climate favourable to his work. These litle circles have quite aptly been dubbed sects or chapels. The willingness of the adepis to join together at all costs through provocative attitudes capable of excluding the profane and shocking the bourgeois world has been emphasized, often in order to deride it. This behaviour reflects a profound feeling that innovation in art constitutes a powerful element of subversion, effecting the interior transformation of man and consequently being akin to certain mystic {impulses and initiation practices. Each school has felt the need to assert, itself through manifestos and writings that alternate polemic with elf justification, We know how fragile these enthusiastic groupings have ‘proved, The shortcomings of their programme, their utopian character land the development of personal ambitions account for their dissoli- tion, The painter quickly complains about the writer’s level of understanding which he feels is inadequate and seeks to free himself from ths tutelage; ke keenly fels the difference in technique ~ that of the brush and that ofthe pen; he intends to offer his pictorial message in complete freedom and express his emotions in an individual way ‘The literary interpretations his works provoke annoy him. He wants his works to reach tae spectator’ sensibility directly without aesthetic discussions, “The painter's hope of entering into immediate contact with the pub: lic is generally frustrated. A detaled study of the mechanism of visual perception reveals why. Man does not perceive the totality of what his, eye sees in the reality that surrounds him but only what his mind is looking for. He distinguishes tte forms he is accustomed to, which remind him of known objects. He recognizes more than sees. He pet ceives that which responds to an inner interrogation, which accords ‘with his fears or desires. Thus perception proves to be a function of a prior sensorial and intellectual education and reflects internal life as ‘mulch as external reality. For more than half a century now the painter hhas renounced the reproduction of familiar images composed for the spectator’s enjoyment; he has devoted himself to the destruction of traditional forms; e has ceased to act as a narrator so as to become a constructor, an explorer. ‘Considering this modern painting which shocks and perplexes the public, the writer fel the need to fill the gap, to draw attention to can vases whose importance seems primordial to him, to place the spectator in frames of mind that offer the possibilty of understanding and feeling. tost recent ‘avourable sd sects of all costs ofane and norder to vation in ain mystic Ato assert, with self: vings have character F dissohu- level of oe himself so that of. Tmeisage dual way, He wants aesthetic tthe pub- of visual ‘what his 3 mind is which He per- accords ‘tion of a tal life as ‘epainter ‘dor the tection of become a flexes the ‘ntocan- Speciator teeing. An Encouter from the Other Side 201 ‘The fact that in the contemporary age art has ceased to be a source of pleasure for the use of a privileged class, a means of pleasantly embellishing any leisure time they stl have, the fact that it has been devoted to the aims of disruption, place the painter and the poet in the advance guard of a battle unprecedented in history. The artist i alone fighter subject to his personal necesity but his internal drama isa tes- timony, a manifestation of the general drama of the world: his life and ‘work are often more characteristic than many collective movements ‘whose interpretation is made dificult by the combination of contrary forces that they represent. itis a cliché to insist on the breadth of the revolution we are wit- nessing today, itis another to admit our incompetence at mastering the whole situation and perceiving the resolut.on of conflicts it represents, Plunged into this disheartening obscurity, the writer spon- taneously brings his attention to bear on the few luminous images that shine out and which he interprets as responses to his inner anguish, He interrogates certain paintings more anxiously than ever. About Wifredo Lam During the three centuries following Columbus's discovery, the Caribbean was the far-off paradise where Europe's dreams became reality; bewitching islands wher life escaped the moral and material restrictions that the structure of the bourgeois economy increasingly ‘imposed on the old continent. It was truly the poets’ Eden, with its ‘unknown tres, its monstrous, heavily perfumed Mowers its perpetual summer and its infinite riches waiting to be gathered. The descendants of a nobility emigrated there, eager to reconstruct a feudal system that had vanished forever in its native land somewhere far away: the lost children of Nantes, Cadiz and Amsterdam, keen to indulge their appetite for violence, sensuality and indiscipline. ‘Such paradises imply the existence of penal colenies. With the orig- {nal Indians extinct, negroes were imported to maintain the garden of ‘Hesperides. In their stinking holds, carves transported an entire peo- ple whose only wealth was & nostalgia for their native Africa and the ‘memory of a most ancient civilization from which they had been bru- tally torn, a people who were to be submitted without explanation to the customs and religion of the masters who were buying them. In these West Indies, through the magic of the soil, the European litte by litle lost his original characteristics and became Creole. The black ‘man, too, transformed himself: he veiled his deep hatred and his desire m2 Refusal of the Shadow for revenge with the indolent acceptance that suggested an infinite taste for happiness. Under a compliitous sun, he hid his atavstic fear ‘behind raucous laughter and kept the rhythms of his race unbroken, ‘And 50 the West Indies waited, in a heavy atmosphere where pimento ‘mixes with sugar as, forgotten by zoological evolution, the iguana of the fle des Saintes, the agouti of Cuba and the anachronistic cayman of Ester and the Artibonite, waited, species suspended in time, dream, images that faded away on awakening. Awakening, that is what the steamboats siren heralded, The gardens fell prey to new arrival, avid for trade and exploitation, With slavery nominally abolished, a less recaleitrant and more efficient workforce was supplied by an over. populated Asia, ‘Across the sea conquered by machine the route that girdled the lobe was traced, linking the hemispheres to become ceaselessly tra versed with ever-increasing speed, a speed that today has become dizzying and negates space. Along this great world route, replacing the. ‘old Asian trade routes, lies Havana, From Caribbean Cuba, woven with cane fields, fanned by palm tees, sprang up one of those places of encounters intersections and minglings that are the great international ports, places where everything comes together and separates again, from where one can leave for anywhere, return from anywhere, where continents greet each other asthe liners set sail. Havana, the crossing. ‘of the ways is atthe same time also the capital of a state that has con- structed its independence. A unique city, with its white Capitol, the mark of America, its Banks its palaces its luxurious European shops, In the Vedado quarter, comfortable private mansions shelter rich descendants of the Spanish colonists who keep a watch on sugar prices fon the New York stock exchange while their wives, so whit, scintilla- ingly elegant, prepare to leave for Europe and the centres of luxury and pleasure ‘Behind the Capito, in the very heart of the city, the Chinese quar- ter brings together a large, industrious community, with a passion for gambling, trembling with the strange rhythms ofits theatre and cine- ‘mas, a community that experienced extremes of hardship nearly a century ago and overcame them, which now has its banks, its pawn- brokers its restaurants, which has lost none of its ancestral customs and has retained its links with Asia, ‘And immediately around Havana, from La Regla to Marianao, there is Africa singing, being born and dying with the same frenzy t0 the sound of the drums, taking fright and defending itself in the magic huts ertonal tes asi, ee, whee harcore Pon anions etter rh sarees ‘cn snuryand ‘ese quare 'ssion for and cine: nearly a ts pavn- customs arianao, irenzy to he magic An Encounter from the Other Side 203 1902... As an immense wind of liberty set Cuba on the road rds the realization of national independence, in the provinces, in fhe middle of an ocean of sugar cane, at Sagua la Grande, Wiftedo tam was born, His father was 2 77-year-old Chinaman, sil in the Grime ofife:he would die in 1928, aged 103. Not acoole, but acul- Prated igure, a public seivener respected by everyone. He knew the thousands of characters of the world’s most complex written language fe came from far and wide to consult him while he remained mys- ejpus and secretive, in an almost complete silence. He frst married a tehite woman whom he renounced, in accordance with ancient prac- Toe, because she was barren. His second wife was a beautiful, lively foung aegres, who bore him nine children and showered them with that affection that African women reserve for their young. Her own nother, moreover, was born in the Congo; imported to Cuba, the ood fortune of a marrage toa well-to-do mulatto had delivered her from her servitude. Wiftedo's youth was the avenues of flame trees that disappear into the vast expanses of sugar canes, the great heat in which muted pres ‘aces shimmer in the noonday ar, shaded corners where disquieting forms float, Strange lights flickered in the eyes of the men living round the child: the flames of hope and of disquiet, a hope for lib- tity, a violent desire to put an end to the age-old oppression, a desire fo rie to the ranks of men, to participate in what European culture ‘mpeses as an ideal of beauty; a disquiet faced with the vicissitudes of ‘Ocal politics in which, by the paths of corruption, oppression assumed new forms. On some evenings, whilst his father joined his ompatriots at the Chinese casino, Wifredo heard, coming from the far reaches of the plain, the echoes of the ceremonies by which the blacks, his mother's blood brothers, asked the forces of the earth, through the power ofthe herbs, for beneficent support and the means to gratfy their vengeance. Lam's father was a civilized man, He knew, better than those gen- tlemen of the sugar companies, the value of intelligence and the txcellence of the power of sensitivity He allowed his son to embark on ‘career as a painter, without trying to discourage his vocation; on the contrary, he had the presentiment that light would emanate from his fon, and often called him ‘Lucero’. The latter began his studies in Havana and, with a modest travel grant awarded by his home town, arrivec in Madrid in 1923. At the time this voyage was an obvious hecessity. Despite the political independence so painstakingly Achieved, the Latin American republics have remained up until the 204 Refusal ofthe Shadow last few years in the grip of yearning for thei culture's birthplace ang of the spiritual guardianship of Europe Witredo’s stay in Madrid lasted fifteen years. He has only told me about the most general stages of his evolution there. His life th which was dramatic, would merit a detailed analysis, whose element} hope his wife, Héléne Lam, might one day assemble I seems that dag ing the fist period he set out to conquer European tradition with considerable good will, ood faith and even complet enthusiasm, and that everything appeared tobe going wel. He marted and had acl But, almost immediatly, the storm burst that deszoyed his plans for integration into Madrid life: his wife and ehild died. Wilredo found himself plunged into total despair he topped painting. Nothing mat tered to him any more, he wanted to understand, but as yet knew only What he had to reject he rejected the paintings he had done, tho ‘being made around him, and the sting socal orer, the soure of hi unhappiness. His attitude was entirely one of digust and revolt of ‘onchalanoe and pesimism. He emerged with dial from this state only around 1934; transformed by this inner crisis, through his ead ‘ngs he was now conscious of his ancestral reality, which he no longer had to hide or deny and which was notin any way inferior. He tated to become interested, in an as yet imprecise way, a what he called the “cosa negra’. "AL this ime Madrid was plunged into an atrosphere that I wal recall in which the ever-present threat ofa fascist coup drat Was coun terbalanced with the dizzying hope of final conquest of social and human liberty, an atmosphere at the same tim: weakened by the

    You might also like