THE SWEET GUIDE

 

I've often wondered what animates my dear, eccentric comrade Currado Malaspina. He has many strange habits and obsessions. He wears scarves in summer, he collects wind chimes and garden ornaments and he reads and rereads Dante in Italian without understanding a word.

His latest folly is imagining Beatrice Portinari as a celestial seducer luring an earnest and vulnerable Alighieri into spasms of desire. His illuminated Paradiso which he impishly titled "La Dolce Guida," is weird and beautiful.

Though still far from finished, we can get an idea of what it might look like by this misleading video:

Paris and Los Angeles: Sister Cities Not Exactly On Speaking Terms

My good friend Currado Malaspina loves to walk. In Paris, this is not unusual. It is not even unusual to interrupt a walk in order to make a few sketches. In Paris, Malaspina is a sparrow in a tree.

Los Angeles is something else. Walking in Los Angeles, though far from a felony, is still something rather freakish. Combine that with squatting on a curb with pen and ink, and you've got yourself an anomaly.

Luckily, squatting on a curb in L.A. is a commonplace and as long as Currado is not publicly defecating, folks leave him alone. 

IN EXCHANGE FOR WORDS

The tragedy of Currado Malaspina is too petty, too puerile, too insignificant to serve as a cautionary tale. Malaspina is a silly, gifted man. His reputation in France has never suffered from his serial scandals. Quite the contrary. But to American sensibilities, his chest-thumping maleness is a putrid remnant of a discredited time.

 

Perhaps this graphic record will suffice.

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.