I LUSSURIOSI

Currado Malaspina has been working on a series of hand-colored monotypes based on Dante's depiction of the second circle of Hell.

SEMIRAMÌS, Malaspina, 2010

Malaspina has always insisted that Dante's condemnation of these carnal malefactors was at best halfhearted. As a lapsed Catholic and a strident opponent of chastity this is hardly surprising.

What seems far more astonishing is that this new completed series will be published in book form by Fedeli Edizioni, the official publishing house of L'Ordine di San Otto.

Michele Scottman, principle editor of Fideli is "thrilled to publish this important artistic document" and sees no conflict with its subject matter or style. Pre-ordered advance copies of the first edition have already sold out and Scottman predicts that I Lussuriosi will out perform Fideli's last major blockbuster,I Modi di Preghiera Estatica in Roma di Secolo Diciassettesima. 

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HOMO LUDENS

There are hundreds of little slips of paper tacked on the walls of Currado Malaspina's Rue Picot studio. If you ask him about the significance of these miniature cryptograms, most likely he'll shrug and quickly change the subject.

There's a pained eloquence about these somber images. I've often speculated about their meaning. Throughout the years I have arrived at a number of vague surmises.

1. These are nothing but idle doodlings, freely associated images void of any allusion or narrative.

2. Based on the texts, these are shards of violent fantasies, tiny testaments to a diseased mind.

3. Considering Currado's extensive priapic peregrinations, these are diminutive trophies, capricious aide-mémoires, carnal baseball cards, virile notches scratched with the swagger of an aging Lothario.

4. Though never much of a collector of the works of others, these are drawings done by another hand entirely. Based on certain stylistic oddities, most likely the artist in question is Micah Carpentier .

I welcome any insight from any of my readers who are familiar the works in question.

EVERY LOVE IS LAUDABLE

The mighty rabble of unreason, the prattlers of the pulpit, the blind banqueters of inanity, the blatherers, drivelers, twaddlers and knaves have all declared Currado Malaspina a menace to our young. "Obsédé par la gouttière" was how Monseigneur Eustace Etherlburga, pastor of L'Eglise Sainte de Chapele, Brabant described him in his weekly radio address last Sunday.

L'Animo ch'e` Creato ad Amar Presto, 1979

He may have been referring to a little known group of works-on-paper entitled "Felicità Raggiunta". Originally intended to illustrate the offbeat poems of Becolade Leonidas, the Raggiunte's graphic muscle was deemed ill-suited and inappropriate by Leonidas' long time publisher Gulyan Puratos.

The small suite of drawings surfaced recently at Bloedpens Bruxelles on rue Duquenois just off of Le Grand Place. A third-rate gallery on the fourth floor of a furniture warehouse, Bloedpens typically traffics in fake Hergé lithographs and the teacup poodle gouaches of Aimeus Gaufres. It turns out Malaspina's ex-wife Anaïs maliciously unloaded reams of Currado's early work in order to flood the market and subject her erstwhile husband's reputation to a good old fashioned lashing.

Fat chance!

Etherlburga's jeremiad has only added to the Malaspina spell. When last checked, the wait-list to acquire anything by Currado Malaspina, regardless of period or quality is about as long as the Antwerp Yellow Pages. 


There's no such thing as bad publicity. Wasn't Tintoretto referred to as "the Menace of Venice"?
 

THE TERRIBLE PRICE OF HIGH CULTURE

Finally, after the difficult copyright negotiations, the pious familial hand-wringing, the censorious governmental grandstanding and the overly cautious publishing house indecision, the full and complete edition of The Letters of Currado Malaspina is set for release!

This is bad news.

Not for me. No. Not for Currado. Not for Gallimardon, the Beaubourg, the Nouvelle Revue Marginale de Livres, TF2, the  Bibliothèque Calomnieux or the Académie de Trésors Nationaux. No. All of the above stand to profit regally not to say obscenely.

No. This is bad news for the many people, dare I say, the many women (for the lion's share of addressees are women) whose intimate confidences are about to be betrayed. Careers will be ruined, marriages destroyed, trusts violated and reputations sullied.

And for what??

For a few hundred beautifully annotated, erotically charged and delicately rendered epistolary drawings. 

Hélas