Overview

"With its signature style that marries Cubism and Surrealism with Afro-Cuban and Caribbean motifs, the art of Wifredo Lam occupies a unique position in the history of modern art. Like many modern artists, specifically Pablo Picasso, Lam participated in the primitivist movement, drawing inspiration and imagery from non-western, pre-technological cultures. Yet, unlike European and Euroamerican primitivists, Lam, who was a Cuban of Spanish, African, and Chinese descent, was engaging with his own cultural heritage in his works. His authenticity as both """"primitive"""" and """"primitivist"""" challenges the fundamental tenets of primitivism and makes Lam an ambiguous, fascinating figure in twentieth-century art. This wide-ranging study explores Lam's enduring contribution to world art history - the reclamation and projection of an African identity within mainstream art. Lowery Stokes Sims surveys Lam's work, focusing on the period from 1947 onwards, in which he demonstrated the viability of nationalist pursuits within modernism to a new generation of artists. She traces his career and life and the critical reception of his work in Cuba and Latin America, the United States, and Europe as each locale predominated in his career. This masterly assessment of Lam's later work demonstrates the evolution of primitivist concepts in modern art from the specifically ethnographic to the more psychic and existential. What emerges from Lam's story is the fate of Surrealism in the postwar era as it permuted into international artistic movements such as the CoBrA, the Group Phases, and the International Situationists."

Full Product Details

Author:   Lowery Stokes Sims
Publisher:   University of Texas Press
Imprint:   University of Texas Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.50cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   1.334kg
ISBN:  

9780292777507

ISBN 10:   0292777507
Pages:   311
Publication Date:   15 June 2002
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Out of Print
Availability:   Awaiting stock  

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction 1. The Primitive within Primitivism : Lam's Encounter with the School of Paris 2. Mediating the Sacred and the Profane: Lam's Cuban Work in the 1940s 3. Myth and Totemism: Lam and the New York School, 1942-1952 4. Surrealism after World War II: Lam in Europe, 1947-1960 5. Lo Maravilloso and the Antillean Ethos: Lam in Cuba and Latin America, 1946-1960 6. The Demise of Surrealism: Lam and the U.S. Art Scene, 1950-1980 7. The Artist in the Revolution: Lam in Cuba, 1960-1982 8. A Shaman for Modern Times: Lam in Europe, 1960-1982 9. New Means and New Media: Lam's Late Work, 1970-1982 10. The Deft Juggler of Cultural Modes : Lam in the Postmodern Context 11. Toward a New Art History: Lam Scholarship in the Twenty-first Century Notes Selected Bibliography Index

Reviews

The originality of Lowery Stokes Sims's new study lies, partly, in the generous attention she pays to the work which Lam produced in the last thirty years of his life... profitable and interesting is Sims's vigorously pursued exploration of the problem of Lam's cultural identity and his positioning at the crossroads of European modernism and Third World art... Wifred Lam and the International Avant-Garde, 1923-1982 becomes a history - in minature - of both changing Western attitudes to non-Western cultures and of the growing challenge to Western cultural primacy by the post-colonial world. - Times Literary Supplement, April 4, 2003

Author Information

Lowery Stokes Sims is Executive Director of the Studio Museum in Harlem.

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