Friday, May 29, 2009

THE ATELIER


"The hideous work of painting offers grace to those who greet its drudgery, not with groans but with gratitude." Thus wrote Gayland Fix in his preface to the catalogue raisonné of Currado Malaspina's work, "Malaspina: The Complete Oils" (Gallimard 2002).

To pay a visit to Currado Malaspina's Rue Gassendi studio is to perform a haj to a time-hallowed glade of unguarded passion. Jealously unkempt, the space is an unseemly spring of anarchy. It swells with the stuff of art in an ungainly stillness that haunts even days after one's departure.

Yet it is here where
Adona's Motto, was painted and here where The Milky Garment series was nursed to perfection. For thirty years Malaspina toiled on such masterworks as Rightous Guild, Lightly Come The Babes, Don Juan Of Jerusalem, and Une Belle Une Moche. It was here where he and Lita Abruzzi foiled the arc of reason with their savage and accursed love affair.

I am now in Paris, visiting with my good friend Malaspina and we are sharing our painterly thoughts on the significance of flesh, the shape time and the rudded soil of the South.