Surrealism's Other Side Ratnam, Niru. Article Review

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They were able to hear white masters with new voices renouncing this mastery. The Caribbean artists "were not only digesting Surrealism; they were, in fact, making it Caribbean" (68). Wilfred Lam's "The Jungle" includes both Surrealist and Picasso's flavor and also a unique Caribbean quality that displays "the interdependence of people, ancestors, spirits and natural elements" (68), mixed with undercurrents of colonialism and slavery, such as the symbolism of the tobacco leaves and sugar cane. Breton said Surrealism offered artists a mode of revolutionary thinking to "leap into the unknown" (70). The Aime Cesaire poem (67) "Notebook of a return to my native land," was considered by Breton to be one of the great prose-poetry works of the 20th century, parented by the three literary movements of the negritude, Harlem Renaissance, and French Surrealism.

p. 68 Mabille reads Lam's work with voodoo reference. Compares it to Hitler's cohorts in Europe.

"Mabille's reading is not simple primitivising, despite his running together of Santeria and voodoo." it's possible to see Lam's symbolism as being interested in Santeria. Mabille is analyzing this correctly in relationship to Tropique's goal to express a distinct Caribbean cultural and artistic "spirit.

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p. 69 Lam goes beyond what would be the considered Surrealist approach

"Although Lam did occasionally paint specific deities like Ogoun Ferraille, horned and with an iron horseshoe as a head…his figures are more often generalized horned or masked, set with a tropical world." Lam, in Idol and Reunion. It looks Surrealist, but also has a local flavor…local circumstances embodied his work.

p. 70 for those involved with Caribbean Surrealism, it "provided a mode of revolutionary thinking that allowed a 'leap into the unknown'"

This is the "otherness" that Breton was speaking of when he sees the Caribbean Surrealism. He sees Haiti's "latent Surrealism." It gave him a "sense of wonder," where a largely 'other' finally finds an actual 'other' corresponding to those imaginings. but, it's necessary to go beyond the stereotype with a dialogue between West and non-West. Instead, one needs to look at dialogues from "reductive accusation of exoticism." Breton understood this. He said "Exoticism, one could mistakenly say, exoticism, a most careless….....

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