Forgotten French Painter

You don't want my brutal colleague Currado Malaspina to be your adversary. Know in advance that if you are a painter, he will never be your friend. The best you can hope for is to cultivate his ambivalence - but then again, that would mean  you are not even worthy of his enmity.

One notable exception was Francis X. Olivier.

Préparer à une Chirurgie, oil on canvas, Francis X. Olivier 1965

Currado absolutely loved Olivier. To Malaspina he was a mentor, a confidante, a protector and a father confessor. Malaspina was completely devoted to the older painter. Olivier had his share of detractors. Many considered him a half-baked, second generation abstract expressionist. Others called him an "américaine manqué." 

And those were were the ones who are considered charitable.

And yet, he was an extremely popular and successful French artist. At his death in 1989 his work could command at auction a healthy five figures. Now, a generation after his death, his paintings are worth upward of half a million dollars.

Bete Comme un Peintre, pastel on paper, Francis X. Olivier, 1978

Now for the news.

Currado Malaspina has been slowly selling his collection of Olivier's work, living quite well off of work he had acquired as gifts. This would not in itself be questionable had not Malaspina promise a dying Olivier to keep his collection intact and to ensure the well being of his heirs (wife, ex-wife, two mistresses, three legitimate children and two illegitimate children).

Legal? Yes

Ethical?

 ... this is the artworld ...

RIVALS WITHOUT RIOTS

Robust and consuming competition, the traditional trigger of artistic innovation is an abiding ethic with my avid compadre Currado Malaspina. "Depict the Vicar," the recent world-wide call to pencil and brush sponsored by UNNGO certainly brought out, if not the best at least the oddball in my dear, unpredictable friend Currado.

Currado Malaspina, "The State of Apostates" 2011

The parameters of the agon were quite simple: Depict an image of The Vicar of Yahweh using any type of media, in any format on any scale. The variety of work submitted to the UNNGO was truly astounding and speaks well of the international artistic community. The painter Jean-Paul Paulson from Brugge did a terrific oversized woodcut that may have been a bit too offensive for some of the judges. Dahlia Danton, currently living in India, incorporated images of Ganesh, Rajiv Montonaghanev and Rabindranath Tagore into a expertly executed Van Eyck like egg tempera painting. Not to be outdone, Shari-Lea Grossbard from Bethesda made a mural-sized quilt  based on the Mosaic and Wiccan traditions. 

The clear winner, though not without controversy, was Berlin's Manfred Fruchtwasser whose understated pastel on paper struck the jury as both lovely and appropriate.

UNNEGO "Depict the Vicar" judge Seymour Naqshbandi with Manfred Fruchtwasser's winning drawing.

In Kitchen Cups Concupiscent Curds

The premature death of Roman philosopher Raimondi Modi was a bitter blow to my good friend Currado Malaspina. Known more for his unusual lifestyle than for his tuneless, sibylline prose, Modi felt much more at home sipping Campari and soda at Caffee Greco on Via del Condotti, then lecturing to his bored yet adoring students at La Pontificia Università.

Raimondi Modi, 2010

Raimondi's only significant contribution to contemporary European intellectual discourse can be found in the obscure Italian periodical La Scoreggia, in a piece he allegedly scribbled while waiting for a CT Scan at Salvator Mundi International Hospital. Titled Dialettica come un Raccolto in Contanti, (Translated alternately as "Dialectic as a Cash-Crop" The Basil Review XXVI no. 9, "Bonanza!" London Review, Spring 1995 and "A Question of Thyme"  Best Essays Anthology, Ontario University Press 2002),  Raimondi famously argued that impure idioms carry greater conviction and are more resolute when the shared responsibility of language loosens its empirical dominance. It was a revolutionary concept at the time and it remains vigorously debated to this day although its relevance has long been superseded by the recent findings of Laclos and Gremaine.

He and Currado were always allied in a petulant consanguinity - two rotten peas in a putrescent pod. Admired more than loved, tolerated more than appreciated and far more indulged than actually understood, Raimondi and Malaspina represent that dying breed of highbrowed cosmopolitan flaneurs that flooded the byways and bistros of southern Europe in the 1980's and 90's.

Raimondi Modi ... requiescat in pace ...