Surrealizing Wifredo Lam?

Abstract

Abstract In their writings on the Cuban artist Wifredo Lam, Surrealists and the related avant-garde forge a fictional construct, ‘Wifredo Lam.’ Their texts are explored in relation to what André Breton identified as the two approaches to the artwork: a subjective approach expressed through poetic language; and an interpretation based on objective knowledge expressed through rational language. An overview of Lam’s artistic activities focuses on his participation in Surrealist activities and his affinities with its principles. Breton goes further, appropriating the artist for Surrealism, attributing poetic, mythical and primitivizing qualities to the paintings. His interpretation contrasts with Leiris’s ethnographic approach to Lam as ‘un homme métis’ [a man of mixed ethnicity], corresponding to the second ‘temptation’ proposed by Breton. Finally, it will be argued that the two discourses often cohabit and merge, notably in texts on the artist by Aimé Césaire, for whom Lam was a political companion in their shared commitment to political liberation and the recognition of a Caribbean identity.