ACCOUNTING

A wet glittering sun sizzles upon the gravel road that leads to Currado Malaspina's summer studio in Languedoc-Roussillon. Situated about three kilometers west of the huge salt-water swamp of Camargue, it is not unusual to spot one of the many beautiful cliff birds that are indigenous to the area.

The garden behind Currado Malaspina's Languedoc-Roussillon studio. 2013

For Currado, summer begins in April and ends sometime in late June when he cedes his little portion of paradise to foreign tourists, typically Germans, ready to spend upwards of €1500 a week for the privilege of renting his cozy two bedroom cottage.

Till then, he spends his time reading the Georgics, grilling gamey meats and painting small, insignificant watercolors on scraps of discarded drawing paper.

Untitled watercolor, Currado Malaspina, 2013

For my good friend Currado, the season is one glorious, languorous, unending day. His pictures, usually no larger than the size of a man's palm, command in the rancorous Parisian art market the decidedly immodest sum of €7500.

For my good friend Currado Malaspina, profit is never poisoned by the brunt of onerous exertion.
 

THE SPARK THAT FORMALLY FLARED

 In 1998, my well-traveled friend Currado Malaspina was commissioned by Arvindah Rei to provide a comprehensive graphic guide to the Kama Sutra. Reading the text sutra by sutra, he was struck by its eerie familiarity. 

Though nominally a Catholic, Currado explained to Arvindah, that he suddenly realized he had "been a devout Hindu all these years."

"Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha are the four horses of my personal apocalypse," suggesting, I think, that these post-Vedic ideals were somewhat incongruent with his dissipated French, urban way of life.

 For the past 15 years Malaspina has been engaged in a pyrrhic struggle to assimilate East with West. All the while, he has been slowly and methodically reconfiguring his original vision of this seminal Sanskrit text. Pulling apart, creaking loose and tunneling through, Currado has eliminated his earlier innocence in favor of a patchwork of tortured ambiguity. 

What the unholy spirit has dispensed will be on view next month in a much anticipated, off-season exhibition in Paris's 6th arrondissement.

As a dark shadow lengthens over his earlier work and before the show opens, I think it is appropriate to remember that sweet and buoyant  radiance that characterized the younger version of Currado.

Arvindah Rei has since passed and the State of Tamil Nadu has turned his palatial home into a national museum. For ardent fans of Malaspina, a pilgrimage to Chennai is a must.

 

The work of Currado Malaspina permanently installed in the Arvindah Rei Museum, Chennai