A (3:59)

And I have to say, this exhibition is beautiful. It's huge, for sure. Thank you. So I tell people, set aside time to go see it. But I understand, Christophe, it's that some of these works were challenging for the Museum of Modern Art to get to bring to New York. What was the most challenging piece for you to acquire?

B (4:20)

So I think one of the complexity of the project that Lamme's work is very much scattered all around the world. So it's an exhibition that bring together 59 lenders, 39 private collectors, 20 institutions. And we really, Beverly and I, wanted to go back to drawing board, just try to really look at everything we could put our sight on and really pick what we felt was the most decisive picture. And one of them, maybe the most challenging of all, was his largest ever made work, almost 15 foot long, almost mural size, and on paper, mounted on canvas, making it very fragile. And that work was so large, so fragile, that it had not been exhibited since the mid-50s. So it became for us, absolutely a priority to bring it back and to show it for the first time in New York.

A (5:15)

Do you have a favorite image, Beverly? You said the most difficult one perhaps to bring.

C (5:23)

You know, it's really hard. It's like choosing your favorite child. Because we worked so long and so hard on this exhibition, and one of the goals of the exhibition was to bring people past the jungle into the later work. And for me, that's been really important. The way the installation is, is that you get to the jungle almost right away. You enter the museum, you look one way, you see the Civil War, you look another way, you see the jungle. And we really wanted people to understand how full and complex and gorgeous his career was and what an amazing art maker he was. So I'd have to say I can't narrow it down to one, but I was thrilled to learn about these works from the late 1950s, that verge on abstraction called the Bruce paintings. I had not seen those in person before, and it's their first time in New York. So I hope people will be as surprised and excited about them as I was when I first saw them.

A (6:11)

We have to talk about the jungle. This was wild. This is not painted on canvas. That kind of blew my mind. Why did he paint this on paper?

C (6:25)

Well, his use of paper, and it's just plain brown wrapping paper known as craft paper.

A (6:32)

It was amazing.

C (6:33)

Well, it starts in Spain. He's trying to paint and make art during the war, and materials are scarce. And what can he get his hands on? He can get his hands on paper and he's making his own gouaches. He's like catch as catch can, trying to make art, but he doesn't have the money or the availability of materials. And when he paints Spanish Civil War, this great picture in 1937, he does it. He gets to scale by piecing two large pieces of this brown paper together. And then when he goes back to Cuba, when he wants to paint a statement, painting a big picture, he still doesn't have any canvas. And so he goes back to this wrapping paper paper, not some very fancy, like artist paper, but this brown craft paper. And for him, it becomes this touchstone. He actually falls in love with this material and he goes back to it every time we see this sort of great statement or experimentation, grand composition. His largest picture that Christophe was talking about earlier is also on this paper, as are the Bruce pictures. So it really becomes something, a kind of freedom for him to work on this, on this material, with this material.

A (7:40)

Those are the practical aspects. I can afford this material. I can afford to use it. Let's talk about his spirituality a little bit. Christophe, how does spiritual influences. How do we see it in his art?

B (7:55)

I think we see it. I think first there's a sense of, again, a sense of purpose, a sense of civic engagement. The idea that art is not just about art itself. Art is also for a cause. And how he's going to bring together very, very powerful motif that talk about that, about the mission of art, to transcend art itself and to be about our contemporary lives. And you'll see in his work, particularly in Cuba, a number of motifs that really come directly out of the Cuban religions, the Afro, Caribbean religion, you can even identify. And he's going to play with those motifs, integrate them within his own vocabulary. So creating a world that's both immersive, magical, but also deeply, deeply connected to a sense of faith. And you see also that earlier in Spain is attracted by the way we can use very powerful motifs that allow to bring people into a new world. And the jungle is very much about that. It's sugar cane. And between the sugar canes you'll see those extreme. You don't know if they're friendly or they could be a bit hostile. And you have to catch them to find them, the creatures of the night sometimes. And they bring the viewer into a place that is completely unexpected.

A (9:26)

You mentioned the latter work, which seems a little spookier than his previous work. What was going on in his life when he was creating the work in his later years?

C (9:37)

I think the big break actually comes in 1946. He's spent the war in Cuba. He's been showing the whole time in New York City. And when he's finally able to travel again, he goes first to New York, then shows in London some works that he had done while he was in Haiti, where he had exhibited, and then goes back to Paris and post war Europe really kind of, for lack of a better word, freaks him out. He sees the devastation. He's just like, oh my God, I can't believe this. And he thought, well, maybe he would go back and continue his career that he had left in Paris in 1940. And he's not happy. Another thing he sees there, which impacts him, I think greatly, is he sees his friend Aime Cesaire, who he had met in Martinique on his way back to Cuba. But he also sees African art being sold like baubles in the street, you know, and he sees the separation between the cultural production of these people from Africa divorced from its context, its spiritual context, its day to day context, its life and meaning. And that really impacts him a lot. So when he returns to Cuba after this trip, he has a lot to digest. But one of the things that he states in some very powerful letters that he writes is that he doesn't want to be objectified like that. And he wants to sort of find a way to recontextualize African art of the diaspora in a new kind of way. So he abandons colorful tropical light and plants and makes these darker, more brooding compositions. But they are very theatrical and very stately and sort of, I don't know, there's a kind of epic to them because they're so theatrical that I think is motivated by this trip back to Europe in 1946.

A (11:36)

That was my conversation with co curators Christophe Scherex and Beverly Adams. The show is called Wifredo Lamb. When I Don't Sleep, I Dream, and you can catch it at MoMA through April 11th. Coming up, comedian Jeff Ross talks about his Broadway debut, a one man show called Take a Banana for the Ride, which was recently added to Netflix. That's coming up. This is all of it.

C (12:15)

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A (12:28)

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