WATER(COLOR) UNDER THE BRIDGE

My dear colleague, the French artist Currado Malaspina, is not the most tactful person I know. We met years ago at a conference in Lyon that had something to do with contemporary European painting and he made a deep impression upon me.

He was no more likable then, then he is now.

At the time he had just inherited the directorship of this oddball, neo-Dada artist collective called The Plausible Deniability Project™ (PDP™). He heart wasn't in it. He passed most of the leadership responsibilities to the California painter Dahlia Danton, an artist of modest ability known mostly for her conspicuous indifference to irony. Benefiting from the prestige the republic of France inexplicably grants to loud men in positions of authority, Malaspina turned PDP™ into a lightening rod for Twitter-ready controversy.

His luck may have run out.

"Malaspina est annulé," is the latest headline in the Parisian art press. It seems that some were triggered by his latest show at Valéry Contemporain. 

I'm curious. Perhaps there's more to the story than these trifling little watercolors.

 

Malaspina Performs the Impossible

 The Purgatorio Project is complete

NEVER BY THE BOOK, TILL NOW

Never in my wildest imagination could I have predicted that my good friend Currado Malaspina would agree to subject himself to this type of aesthetic paraphrase.

But, in the age of rupture and fragmentation, I guess it all makes sense.

And actually .... he makes a few good points.

 

THE VIEW FROM THE SEINE

Though my dear comrade and rival Currado Malaspina rarely leaves the cozy confines of the 10ème, his familiarity with the popular cultural trends of the United States is pretty uncanny. 

Though I have lived in Los Angeles for a quarter of a century, I was not familiar with Day Spas, Avocado Toast, Naked Yoga, Medical Marijuana, Cryotherapy, Ojai, Coachella or Self-Care until Currado brought them to my attention.

And I have to say, he is always spot-on!

He has unfailing taste and I have yet to be disappointed by his recommendations.

I have to confess that when he suggested that I start listening to podcasts I asked him if it was on AM or FM! But, after a few guided interventions he succeeded in helping me purchase a smartphone and acquire the appropriate 'apps.'

The very first podcast he recommended was Timmy Black Presents: The Lives of Contemporary Artists. 

I honestly didn't get it at first. I think it went over my head. But after a few binging sessions I became an avid fan. (I actually met Timmy Black, years ago, when we were both young artists struggling to get by. He was working as a bartender and I was working as a sous-chef at Carp and Sea 'Em in Venice!)

Anyway - if you haven't heard about this, I urge you to start listening as soon as possible.

MALASPINA'S ON THE MONEY

My good friend, Currado Malaspina recently suggested that in order to alleviate my prolonged, chronic posture of bitter alienation I should subscribe to a few pointy-headed podcasts.

After experimenting with "Sheila Houpelle Speaks in Tongues" (too obscure), "The Frat Race" (too violent), "Politicalia" (too strident) and "Récits Scolaires" (too French), I finally found the right one!

Now I'm hooked! Once again, Currado Malaspina has demonstrated his refined, eclectic tastes and his wayward yet classy predilections.

DESPACITO

Call it a case of unintended consequences, collateral artistic damage or simply an example of our natural attraction for undeserving demigods but my good friend Currado Malaspina has become something of a folk hero in Latin America.

He's referred to as "el extraño," and his image can be found on walls and stalls from Mexico to the Dominican Republic. He's a favorite among art students - but that's probably because of the legendary 2005 Museum of Contemporary Arts Guanajuato (MOCAG) exhibition Dónde está Duende where he featured portraits of the famous Telenovela starlette, Danaë Jerónima.

The fact that his fame has extended to the general population defies simple explanation.

He's often depicted in the company of Che or Fidel or Hugo Chavez but I've also seen his smug, silly portrait sharing space with Enrique Iglesies and Roberto Clemente.

One would think that Malaspina, whose Spanish rarely extends beyond "cerveza fría por favor" and "eso viene con plátanos fritos" would be an unlikely luminary among Latinos. But it probably began with his improbable friendship with the late Cuban master, Micah Carpentier.



I think Currado was in some way responsible for smuggling Carpentier's paper bag drawings out of Havana and into Paris.

Whatever it is, they seem to love him down there which is fine since nobody north of El Paso has ever heard of him.

And if there is any justice in this world it will remain that way.

DROUGHT

On the face of it, it looks like my dear friend Currado Malaspina is retiring from the art world.

These days he spends most of his time taking long walks through his native Paris, admiring the architecture and nibbling on lightly buttered ficelles that he prepares in advance and packs in neatly folded rectangles of wax paper.

Occasionally he steps into a church and sits in a pew to rest. Sometimes he is almost calmed by the solemnity of the place. He finds the dim lights and the redolence of incense and mold strangely erotic. Sometimes he is moved toward the precipice of awe.

Not an ecclesiastical awe, though I wouldn't rule that possibility out entirely, but by a reverential recognition of what Guy Debord might have characterized as the 'spectacle.' By this I mean that Currado respects sanctity only as an historical remnant and it is precisely in the successful commodification of religion where he reserves his admiration. To him prayer is the ultimate form of artistic conceit. 

It's at that exquisitely lucid moment of cynicism where Currado takes out his small brown carnet de croquis and makes a quick, clumsy pencil sketch, marking the time and date on the back.

Like many contemporary intellectuals who draw comfortable salaries from academia, journalism or politics, Malaspina has lost his faith in institutions.  Artists are typically slow in accepting the fact that their participation in what is clumsily referred to as 'the discourse' is redundant. People no longer have time for ideas and even less time for those who interpret ideas. The bitter truth is that the insular community of self-anointed custodians of high culture are considered by most reasonable people as an adolescent bunch of lazy cranks.

Gone are the days where brilliantly encrypted paintings left the public ruminating on the mysteries of genius.

Currado is tired. He tells me that people never realized how difficult it was for him to sustain the myth that shrouded him like a cassock. Life is simpler now. Long walks and harmless sketches done on the fly are now his greatest pleasures.

Perhaps it's old age and the simple wisdom that accompanies one's recognition of mortality. 

Or maybe he's just out of ideas.