Carlos Luna and Wifredo Lam paint a sprawling and intimate picture of Cuba

WIFREDO LAM’S ‘FEMME ASSISE’

There’s no real reason why Wifredo Lam and Carlos Luna have dueling exhibitions up now at the Museum of Latin American Art, but their two shows work well together. Both men are Cuban—though Lam is 67 years older—and both use Yoruba and Afro-Cuban mythology symbols in their work while confronting social and political themes.

“Wifredo Lam in North America” starts where Lam did: in art school, with the social-realist paintings of Spanish villages and not-so-subtle homages to the artists who most influenced him—Picasso and Matisse, mainly. The most affecting pieces are ones with the elements of Afro-Cuban religions like Yoruba mythology and Santería that would later define his work.

A good example is Femme Au Cheveux Longs, I (Woman with Long Hair), which echoes Picasso’s modernist nudes but introduces those African tribal and mystic elements. His subject has dark skin, and a hard-angle geometrical face that resembles a mask of ellegua (the Yoruba and Santería spirit).

After he painted Femme, Lam’s career became a deep and intense study in the Afro-Cuban religious symbols that defined his childhood (his godmother was a Santería priestess). One of his most famous archetypes was the Femme Cheval, a half-horse/half-woman with strange animal-like features—reiterating Lam’s emphasis on humanity’s connection to nature.

Lam’s persistent use of women in his work wasn’t to objectify or celebrate the nude, like many of his peers, but to confront us: Yes, the Femme Cheval is beautiful, but she watches us with suspicious eyes. In her world, she is the colonized and we are the colonizer. What reason does she have to trust us? We have to decide.

In terms of technique, Carlos Luna’s “El Gran Mambo” is worlds more complex and dense than Lam’s exhibit. Almost all of Luna’s works layer countless symbols and text representing himself and his loved ones, violence, love, politics and Afro-Cuban mythology.

“Mambo” is a magnificent examination of Luna’s rich, complex and socially conscious paintings. It’s fittingly named after what is probably his masterpiece, 2006’s El Gran Mambo.

Mambo is unimaginably big—six huge canvases that barely contain the painstaking imagery, workmanship and symbolism that made him famous: leaves with eyes in them, knives, the Guajiro (a Cuban farm worker that embodies Luna) and the rooster, a symbol of his magical side.

Visit the piece one day and you’ll stare at Castro’s decapitated head; come back tomorrow and you’ll follow the telephone cord that leads into an almost-hidden rooster’s beak. There’s too much for one sitting.

Luna’s work is at its weakest when his message is either too vague or generic to arouse our emotions. Unfortunately, Café Con Con does—or doesn’t—do just that. Surrounded by the words “CAFE CON LECHE” (coffee with milk), a man drinks coffee—of all things—as Luna’s customary eye/leaf images swirl around him. To the left sit two tea kettles and a percolator, with what appears to be steam floating around them.

What’s he trying to say here? Maybe that coffee plays an important part in the daily Cuban lifestyle? I also drink a lot of coffee, but it’s never inspired me to do anything more than wake up.

But that’s a rare weaker moment. In many ways, Luna’s work picks up where Lam left off, at least in its message. Both artists have struggled to reconcile and incorporate Cuba’s diverse culture with the rest of Western society. Seeing their work side by side not only exposes us to two tragically overlooked painters, but it gives us a glimpse of a nation most of us have never seen.

As ambassadors, Lam and Luna show us a Cuba that has more in common with us than we could have ever imagined.

WIFREDO LAM IN NORTH AMERICA AND CARLOS LUNA: EL GRAN MAMBO MUSEUM OF LATIN AMERICAN ART | 628 ALAMITOS AVE | LONG BEACH 90802 | MOLAA.ORG | TUES-FRI 11:30AM-7PM | SAT 11AM-7PM | SUN 11AM-6PM | $5-7.50 | FREE ON FRI | THROUGH AUG 31

Tags: art, carlos luna, Cuba, Long Beach, molaa, wifredo lam