M E R D R E

When the documentary filmmaker Michel Fédérovitch approached Currado Malaspina with a proposal to collaborate on his interminably deferred Jarry project, Currado jumped at the chance. It had little to do with any affinity with the noted progenitor of pataphysics, nor with any absurd interest in the world of the theatre but rather as a means to avoid confronting a chronic creative block that had turned his Rue Cournot studio into a barren patch of abandoned, half finished, ill-conceived attempts at restoring his unearned reputation.

For the sake of cruel but just brevity let me just state that Currado Malaspina is a wretched embittered has-been whose best work is way behind him. Whether it be Alfred E. Newman or Alfred Jarry, it matters little to a man whose creative intellect is a parched mesa of insignificant confections.

Enter Fédérovitch, flush with the financial backing of the pecunious software developers from Sophia Antipolis, Conjurés & Soldats and Malaspina is off his ass and drawing.

If my tone is bitter it is merely a reflection of an acutely focused resentment grounded in the fact that the image posted above fetched a pagan’s ransom at Sotheby’s in the early spring auction. Sold to an undisclosed New York collector, it broke all previous Malaspina records at € 684,000

Ouch.

B A K A

In typical European fashion, Currado Malaspina ignorantly conflates concepts and images of non-Western cultures, churns them into a torpid mush and calls it art. In a recent group exhibition at the Musée d'Art de Hesian on Boulevard de Clichy entitled “Ragoût Est/Ouest,” Malaspina presented fifteen drawings based (very) loosely on the complex ethos of Japan’s pre-industrial military nobility. Titles like Imagawa, Tokugawa and Shingen suggest direct references to the Samurai, yet the flaccid naked figures with their tightly muffined hair look like caricatures of inactive Sumo wrestlers.

None of this pendulous ambiguity deterred soft drink magnate Tony Ichinomiya from buying up the whole series. He plans to build a wing on his Honshu summer dacha just to hang his substantial yet inconsequential Malaspina collection.

FAILING UPWARD

When the Corsican collector Moisés Natali purchased, sight unseen, the entire portfolio of Currado Malaspina’s Maldoror drawings from the unscrupulously successful Rive Gauche art dealer Samassi Arsène, not a few eyebrows were raised. When Natali returned half the pieces as “unsuitable for the home of my virgin daughters,” a wave of skepticism engulfed the 5th arrondissement like a tropical monsoon.

The dubious virtue of the Natali girls notwithstanding, the drawings themselves were not free from controversy.

When the tainted works were returned to the market, an exhibition was held at the Palais de Cupidité’s sumptuous Hall of Divinities. The critics were divided but the public was enthralled. A record shattering seven hundred thousand visitors were swept up by the art and the accompanying succès de scandale. Gary Hoffmansthal of The Guardian called it a “a crass circus of low-brow hucksterism that would make even Damien Hirst soil his cottons”