PREDESTINATION

Few people remember that Currado Malaspina was born on October 1st 1953 and that his godfather was Francis Picabia. It was at Currado’s christening at L’Église Saint-Suplice where Picabia horrified the congregants by declaiming over the chorister’s sweet rendition of “The Little Road to Bethlehem,” his oft quoted aphorism, “It’s really only nonentities who have genius in their lifetime.”

Picabia died the following month and the episode in church became an absent hour in the Malaspina household.

One can’t help but speculate whether the luminous star of Picabia’s difficult intelligence somehow lodged like a paperweight within Currado’s subconscious. When one thinks of Malaspina’s work one realizes how he has consistently operated within the solemn, slow voice of satire. Currado’s limitless capacity for impudence, his constant sniffing for sacred targets among the croupiers of the art world, his indifference to consequence, all evidence an irrational tenderness toward Picabian self-sabotage.

Currado Malaspina continues in his sixth decade, to be the incendiary guttersnipe, thumbing his trunk at the Brahmins of le beau monde. He convulsively makes art that throws a disquieting light on our melancholy failures.

Currado truly is a “monster of courage.”

FRIENDLY CONTOURS

Alfredo Bossi’s strange volume “Squared But Not Unlovely,” is a compendium of profiles, containing charming vignettes of interesting people. Arranged in alphabetical order, the book begins with an uproarious reminisce on the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto and ends with a heartbreaking screed about Chinese painter Zhao Wuji. No entry exceeds a page and some are just a paragraph or two. The texts are superimposed over a typically unrelated image. None of the images are attributed, though some are easily recognizable as Bossi’s own work.

Between Gilka Machado and Michael Melchior is a leaf devoted to Currado Malaspina and his well-documented fear of shadows. Well acquainted with phobias, Bossi’s account avoids all mockery and is one of the book’s most quotable sections.

FREE ENTERPRISE

Last spring at the Institute for Advanced Lateral Studies in Tours, Currado delivered a lecture entitled “The Cruelties of Choice”. In it he laid out what has by now become a familiar theme for people who follow Malaspina’s work. Essentially it describes artistic volition as a series of accidental “wagers,” intuitive predictions made in what Currado calls “the broken mist of misdirected reverie” (rêverie mal dirigée”).

Though well received by the audience at the time, his thesis became extremely controversial when the text was later published in the literary journal Faucon. Michel Encapuchonné, director of L’Ecole Niveau Bas de Paris was “dumbfounded by its witless arguments, gaseous yearnings and clownish inurgency.” Writing in L’Arte Aujourd’hui Brigitte Mamelon called Malaspina “a desperate blow-hard who mangles sentiment with spurious intellectualism and improvable daydreams.”

Currado was understandably hurt and dismayed but remained extremely practical as the events unfolded. Sensing an opportunity, together with the impresario Markus Ohrenschmalz, he staged a public debate at the Palais Garnier, which was televised live on TF2. The spectacle proved both profitable and entertaining and at the present time Currado is negotiating with Cable Statique for a regular series of provocative interviews and disputations.

The working title, loosely translated is “Try To Make Me Cry.”

PAS LAID

The wandering intellect of Currado Malaspina is well known. Embroidered through the myth of the man are tales of his staggering erudition and demonic wit. Few people outside France however, know what Currado looks like. Though lionized in Europe, his name in America scarcely stirs a whimper, (my loyal readers excepted).

Ruggedly handsome, he is often confused for Russian film star Pyotr Mamonov, a fact that has yielded several comical and embarrassing consequences for both of them. Due to his very public affair with fashion model Nicolosa Giannini, Currado has been a ubiquitous presence on European television. And when the photojournalist George Pollexfen published his best selling book “Men,” it was Currado who appeared on the cover.

It is for this reason that I am posting two pictures of my dear friend. The first is clipped from the “Style Desuet” section of the March 18th edition of Le Figaro that accompanied an article about flower arrangements particular to the 18th arrondisement. The second is the cover of Pollexfen’s book.