My Friend Currado Malaspina

February 23, 2009

May 22, 2008

PATRONAGE

Tending to his myrtle-bush some thirty-five summers ago, Currado Malaspina was approached by a man walking a pair of misshapen Boykin Spaniels. After exchanging the obligatory pleasantries they each discovered that not coincidentally, they had several friends in common. Several visits later, the gentleman was invited to Currado's studio, beginning the complicated relationship that endures uneasily till today.

The individual in question was none other than Joey Proudhon, international financier, arms-dealer, art collector and legendary libertine. Today, aside from being under indictment, Proudhon is known as the single largest Malaspina archivist. He owns approximately two hundred drawings, sixty-five paintings, countless sketchbooks, letters and notes and the only existing manuscript of Currado's justly forgotten play "How Sound Helps."

Of the many portraits done of Proudhon, the image above captures the greatest likeness.

April 18, 2008

MALASPINA STOPPED AT EBOLI

The French have a wonderful expression: "Toujours a respirer si nous en perissons," ("We breathe in always though it brings us death"). They use it on billboards, it's quoted by schoolmasters and politicians, it used to appear on the twenty-franc bill and was even the title of a popular folksong made famous by Yves Montand. It originates from a sonnet by Mallarme, which adds a certain ironic poignancy to the ideas expressed in what has become an almost hackneyed aphorism.

I mention this because of the recent Eboli Biennale, the prestigious art exhibition started by Carlo Levi in 1936. Unlike other survey shows, the Eboli Biennale always revolves around a theme. Robert Smithson was introduced to the international scene the year the theme was Entropy. In 1964, Micah Carpentier startled the artworld with his whimsical "Rings and Rhine" when Wagner was the central motif.

This year's Biennale revolves around Artuad's "Voyage to the Land of the Tarahumara." Most of the work made the obvious allusions to hallucinogens, always a popular subject for contemporary art, but Currado chose a decidedly different tack. Taking as his cue Artaud's observation that nature often "exhales" a metaphysical thinking in its constituent parts, he traveled to Mexico and recorded the slow, agonizing death of wagtail coyote. Interwoven with the animal's slow labored breathing was a recording of Dolfata's famous "Queen Reyna Quartet."

This haunting work has rekindled interest in Currado Malaspina throughout Europe. In recent years younger artists have eclipsed his reputation. I am grateful to the Eboli curators, Marcella Speza and Tom Cartelle for their courageous choice of including this still vibrant, original and important artist.

March 31, 2008

GOG/MAGOG

Rapture, as defined by Delville, is an "unstable ecstasy governed by overly optimistic imaginings." In other words, a treacherous locale for intellectuals. And yet, it is precisely the condition in which Currado Malaspina finds himself these days.

In recent months, in interview after interview, Currado has described his new work as "rapturous," or the "sum and summation of a godless rapture." He even went so far as to publicly chastise his dear friend, Kateb Bellal, for his failure to grasp Malaspina's famous criteria that cites "the transmigration of the soulless" as the consistent model for artistic behavior.

If Malaspina seems particularly unhinged these days it may be because he is feeling the gimlet of mortality. The pageant of days and years has given way to the chill of winter. Currado, despite his attempts to still the clock, has been unable to take flight from the jaws of age. His new work and his new eschatological diction are merely inconclusive bulletins putting the quietus to his long and celebrated career.

March 20, 2008

ARS AMATORIA

The Amusements of the Galley Slaves took on a life of their own. Malaspina soon departed from the hoof-prints of Giulio Romano's original conception and rummaged for other artistic kinsmen. "Amor odit inertes," declared Ovid in his strangely contemporary Art of Love and indeed Malaspina heeded the injunction. Love, like art, despises indolence and Malaspina took on both with undiminished ardor.

He pursued a cavalcade of lovers, placing each one in his increasing portfolio of drawings. His energies were Olympian. Seraphic nudes sensuously deployed in post-coital beatitude were depicted alongside saucy nymphettes weeping in ecstatic irreligion. One drawing's innocence avenged another's vulgarity. The gentle feather of sweet caresses and the iron hand of wicked passion obsessed Malaspina in equal measure.

Each drawing was a document, a chronicle of lovers to whom Currado was deeply divided by and devoted to. Like Whitman he contained multitudes and with the stamina of a stripling he annexed a spirited new niche in the annals of art history.

There was much speculation at the time as to the confessional authenticity of the Galley Slaves narrative. Malaspina was fifty years old when the rifle-crack of his concupiscence produced this venerable series of works. I can only quote Currado's unrivaled hetaera, Aspasia Grandeseno, whose untarnished beauty remains as elegant today as it was twenty years ago. "He was Priapus on Dexedrine. As far as his art, it's cheerful but derivative ... but then again, what do I know."

March 10, 2008

INPRUDENT POSITIONS

Commissioned in 1997 by the reclusive Dulcinea Aretino to complete a suite of drawings based on Giulio Romano's I Modi, Currado Malaspina began by trying to find the perfect model. This was no easy task considering the nature of Romano's legendary work.

Grasping the intuitive fringe between naked and nude is a rare gift seldom found among those who labor within the dusty hedges of academic ateliers. He soon discovered that to most professional art models, supine was simply another word for inert.

To find the perfect model he employed an unorthodox method of appraisal straight out of the pages of Pasamonte's 16th century erotic farce, "Dubufe." Under the stress of spectacularly demanding poses, Malaspina's models were asked to express vehement scorn for a past or current lover. If their passion manifested itself primarily in their faces, they were summarily rejected as unsuitable. If, however, their muscles convulsed in concert with their contempt, they were engaged as appropriately expressive subjects.

It was in this manner that Currado fell in love with his most infamous mistress, the wretchedly duplicitous Luscinda Sulla. Eminent as an unparalleled sexual shapeshifter, she was equally esteemed for her stunning beauty and her glittering intellect. In turn besotted and inspired, Malaspina completed the commission (memorably entitled "The Amusements of the Galley Slaves"), baffled by the yoke of his infatuation and the sublimity of his inventions

February 25, 2008

A FELLOWSHIP OF FOOLS

Currado Malaspina was recently in Los Angeles, attending the gala opening of BCAM, the new contemporary wing of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. I must say that he made a seamlessly brisk transition from the grey austerity of wintry Paris to L. A.'s thick pomp of gamboling extravagance. Currado has an endearing weakness for women in gowns.

When his picture appeared in the Style section of Paris Match, obsequiously inhaling the wafted musk from the bare shoulder of Sotheby's Katia Keenen, he was roundly criticized as an artistic milksop. Monique Triage went so far as to call Currado "the lapdog of American corporate collecting." She went on to call the Broad collection "obsolete, shallow and fitfully striving." "American cultural insecurity at its most conspicuous dysfunction," was how Eli Betancourt described the inaugural exhibition in Dossier 900. He called Malaspina's very public obeisance "primal, nervous and painfully guileful. "

Renzo Piano's building received high marks but the actual installation of the artwork reminded Beaubourg's Bettina Arrobas of "the sanitized right-angles of Ikea."

No one was as critical as Malaspina himself. "Don't blame the packsaddle for the donkey's mistake," he said to me, invoking the earthy wisdom of Sancho Panza. "Nobody takes these empty hulls as anything other than the desperate braggadocio of the newly hatted class. But to pay the rent one must pull mightily on those with the lace sleeves."

That last piece of commonsense came from his grandmother.

February 11, 2008

THE BLADE THAT DRAWS

I'm not exactly sure what to make of the newly discovered trove of Malaspina works on paper. As reported in the press, a tattered portfolio of pastel and watercolor drawings was recently unearthed in a shoe warehouse in Neuilly-sur-Marne.

Known as the Dewent Appendix, this long forgotten series of works was originally exhibited in 1990 at Loretta Stern's Berlin gallery, Fische und Kunst. At the time, Senna Bohlen, writing in the now defunct art magazine Dialogue, described the work as "weather-beaten lapels of a formally gemmed frock. Fragmented and slight, these pre-gestated crumbs have moments of brilliance, though too few and too thin."

Interestingly, Rolfe Ben-Horeb used a similar metaphor, though eighteen years later. Commenting in the January issue of L'Oiel on the difference between Currado's erotic monotypes and the works from the Appendix, he wrote: "these unpeeled, mud-built images have a startling frankness. Drawn and modeled en cabochon, they evoke without the brash faceting of Malaspina's more widely known sexual images. They are abstinent but no less sensual."

I continue to be flummoxed. Perhaps an installation in a small exhibit would illuminate on their true worth. I know that several New York and Los Angeles curators have expressed interest in such a venture.

Would the famously recalcitrant Currado Malaspina be willing?

February 04, 2008

ON IMAGINATION

I love footnotes. A book without footnotes is like tea without honey. Subject to the moths of erudition, the marginal asides and discursive digressions are the rock and rod of reading. Undiluted excursions into the labyrinthine world of footnotes always lead to the enchantments of the unexpected. It was on such a donnish journey that I chanced upon a curious anecdote from the colorful life of my friend, Currado Malaspina.

Leafing through the badly beaten pages of a 1971 Vatican Library edition of Fabrius Patavium's "The Medicinal Qualities of Millet And Rye," that quintessential masterwork of 15th century speculative science, I stumbled upon the following note:

"During his tenure at the University of Athens between 1967 and 1969, the painter, Currado Malaspina participated in a clinical trial, testing the viability of Patavium's claim that millet milk intensifies potency. Fragments of the journal Malaspina kept during the course of this study were published in the Hampshire College Review. ("Grain and Groin," HCR, Vol. XVII, No. 4)."

A quick search on JSTOR yielded the apposite article, (I have since subscribed to the enormously eclectic and entertaining Hampshire Review), and though stingy on details it was a fanlight into yet another aspect of Currado's complicated character.

Among the most curious entries in the journal dealt with what Currado referred to as his "dicey dream-world," ("le monde imaginaire inattendu"). In it he describes his belovedly neglected kitten, Blanche who he kept for years but scarcely paid any attention to. It seems that Blanche was attracted to the smell of tobacco and each time Currado lit a cigarette, the kitten leapt upon his lap and rested its head adoringly on his thigh. He noted that through the years he had grown accustomed to this habit and greeted it with indifference. During the trial period, however, in which he drank four cups of millet milk a day, he found this practice oddly and uncomfortably arousing.

I am now looking at Currado's work in a different light.

January 23, 2008

ASK THE EXPERT

French publishing house Le Gardinier announced last week that acclaimed biographer Francine Nougaret has been commissioned to write the definitive biography of Cuban artist Micah Carpentier. Nougaret, whose previous subjects include U Thant, Sonia Delaunay and David Kusevitsky, is perfectly suited for the task. Her most recent book, "The Muse Has Wings: Nabokov, Saint-Saens and the Role of Lepidoptery in Art," was the winner of 2006 Phalene Prize for non-fiction.

Needless to say, she has been assiduously picking the brain of Currado Malaspina. Perhaps no one alive knows as much about the notoriously reclusive Carpentier than Currado. They were together with Eldridge Cleaver in '68, drinking white rum and eating croquetas in that dingy flat on La Rampa Street arguing about mambo and jazz. They were in Paris in the seventies writing dense polemical screeds for Le Revue Hebdomadaire, inciting a generation of art students toward acts of senseless aggression. And after the accident, Malaspina was at Carpentier's bedside as he lay in the coma that ultimately claimed his life.

There has been much speculation whether this new biography, tentatively titled "Savage Afflatus: The Tragic Life of Micah Carpentier," will reveal the identity of the woman who inspired Carpentier's most lyrical drawings. For a while it was thought to be Sonia Braga. Some hypothesized that it was Estelita Rodriguez because of the gradient chin and the gloomy, jet-black eyes. Malaspina once told me that it was Borges' 20-year-old niece, Rosalie, but I find that fairly implausible.

In any event, the publication of this new biography should be the next literary firestorm and Le Gardinier plans to release it in January 2009 so as not to distract the American public from the presidential election.