The Context Machine

Art originating from Cuba is an assorted multiethnic blending of American, African and European aesthetic design showing the distinct demographic of the island. Artisans from Cuba embraced the European modernist movement and the 1920-1930 era witnessed an increase in Cuban vanguardism trends; these trends were characterized by a mixture of contemporary aesthetic styles. Some of the more celebrated 20th century Cuban artists tended to come from the earlier part of the 1900s.

Perhaps the most famous piece of art to be produced in Cuba was THAT photograph of Che Guevara (by Alberto Korda) which was to become perhaps one of the most recognizable photos of the previous century.

The indigenous Cuban art movement gathered momentum after the opening of San Alejandro academy in 1818, which was developed to fulfil the European taste of the Cuban middle class. Towards the end of the 1800s, landscapes were very popular within the Cuban art movement and classicalism was still the favoured style.

However, the pioneering Cuban contemporary artists of the late 1920s had rejected the academic orthodoxies of the national art academy of Cuba. In their formative years, many artists had resided in Paris, where they learned and ingested the tenets of surrealism, cubism, and modernist primitivism. Once back in Cuba, they became dedicated to ground-breaking aesthetic methods and were motivated to integrate this new artistic leaning with a Cuban influence. The vanguardia artists attained global acknowledgement only as recently as 2003 with the Modern Cuban Painting show at the MOMA in New York.

1) The Flower of the Field

One day when I was walking

In the fields of Ol’ St. Paul,
I glanced upon a flower

And asked three questions in all

I said with wonder (and creed):

How do you grow, Little Flower

Amongst all the suckling weeds?
How do you grow, Little Flower

With the Sun baking your knees?

Then responded the flower

(pleased):

“I was planted with a Good Seed.

Notes: Dedicated to Ximena from Huancayo, Peru; written 1981, in West Fargo, North Dakota, and St. Paul, Minnesota. #80

2) The Dreamer’s Castle

I told you I was a dreamer,

You told me I was a fool:
Yet from dreaming I built my Castle

(I know)
From scheming you built yours, too.

Now our castles stand adjacent

Made of stone, wood, and glass:
Butthe difference between our castles
Is that,

Yours lies in quicksand.

Note: Originally published in 1982, in the book “Eternal Echoes”, Vol II, by Poetry Press.

3) The Vision

(The Stepping Stone)

He was lost one night in wonder,
Thinking of the world and its foes
When, on a peak, two thousand feet,
He saw it, in the falling snow.

It was a city beyond all reason
Made of illuminating crimson gold.
He wondered how to each it
Beyond its skies of blue.

Then he saw a falling rainbow
With colors of velvet hue
Two angels softly laid it
Over this city of golden hue.

Then he cried, “O Lord! let me enter
For this world I dwell in, is blind.”
Then he heard a golden voice say,
“It’s a stepping stone to mine.”

Note: Originally published in “The American Poetry Anthology,”
Volume I, Number 2, summer of 1982.

4) The Messiah

Like pelts stretched from side-to-side
On a wooden cross, undressed, alive
The Messiah hung, like a wild beast,
Uncouth, uncrowned, no dignity.
Debonedlike fishHis body hung;
Lifeless, deformed, in silent pain.
Dried blood upon His ransomed face,
Eyes decaying, hardly seen.
Pores hemorrhaging with a gloss of sweet;
Skin like mounds of inflamed tar
(like boils reflecting off dark shaded ice).
Deep distress around His soot-covered veins,
A mixture of Saliva, Dirt and Shame;
Ugly as sin, beyond recognition
(like open incisions of an autopsy).

Acquainted with grief, yes, oh Yes!
As the prophets foretold, long ago.
A new scene, we became REDEEMED!!

Notes: Originally written in 1987; published in the book, “National Library of Poetry,” (won Editor’s choice Award in the North American Poetry Competition of l988, out of 10,000 entries) also published in the book, “Siren,” 2003.

See Dennis’ web site: http://dennissiluk.tripod.com