This summer I have been traveling through North Africa. I have encountered, quite by chance, the art of the Sahmaghreb, a tribe of indigenous nomads who can trace their roots to the Iron Age.
The image above is an amulet used by their priestesses (it’s a Matrilineal society!) to ward off reproductive obstacles.
I’m writing this from an Internet café in Casablanca, sipping arrack from a porcelain teacup.
Having just read the latest post of The Bitter Furies of Currado Malaspina I feel it behooves me to reveal the identity of at least one of the female figures featured in the now infamous piece.
La gamine est moi.
Dahlia Danton
I recently returned from a Mediterranean sojourn where I was invited to speak about my recent series of terra cotta sculptures based on Etruscan priapic amulets. I gave talks at the Anatolia Institute of Design, Graphika Haifa, Corfu’s Workshop for Industrial Innovation and the Mersa Matruh College of Art.
It was grueling but exciting and my work was received with great interest everywhere.
I stopped in to see Currado Malaspina at his summer home in Cospicua and the picture above shows me in his lovely garden.
from the series "Even Sleepers Are Workers"
I have long eschewed the Los Angeles artworld’s penchant for kitschy marketing monikers which implicitly cede its aspirations toward seriousness in favor of New York.
MOCA’s Mondrian Mondays and its equally portentous Night of the Living Masters, LACMA’s Early Renaissance Singles Weekend, the Hammer’s Post-Modern/Post-Partum: New Mothers Paint exhibition are all cases in point.
The Culver City ArtWalk, a worthtwhile, and potentially even important event will take place on May 30th. Advertised as something resembling a daytime pub crawl with pony rides, I’m told by an insider that the reclusive David Schoffman may be offering a few drawings from his Even Sleepers Are Workers series at a gallery so newly minted it has yet to have a name.
This typically clandestine maneuver by Schoffman is designed, as usual, to discourage the idle , disengaged collector. Furthermore, I’m told, the drawings will only be found in the gallery’s back room and one must actively inquire about them at the desk.
Help confound Schoffman’s childish stratagem and visit the gallery at 5797 Washington Boulevard. Maybe we can coax a more public posture from the city’s most adored anchorite.
from "The Index of Interrupted Sins"
El Índice de Pecados Interrumpidos, the small diary found in Micah Carpentier’s Havana studio after he died is one of many diaries kept by this unusual artist. Together with The Book of Muffled Cries and Mis Divorcios, the Pecados is a highly stylized, idiosyncratic document of human weakness and moral frailty. An amateur philologist, Carpentier’s workable knowledge of biblical Hebrew allowed him to delve into the Iron Age conflation of sin with crime. As a lifelong citizen of communist Cuba, the resonances were clear.
The images above are from the section entitled Decalogue.
Malaspina, monotype 1998
In 1998 I spent three tumultuous weeks in Paris, cavorting with Currado Malaspina and his circle of debauched intellectuals. I am not terribly proud of that chapter of my life and yet it was unquestionably pivotal in my development as an artist.
In addition to drinking, arguing, philosphiyzing and submitting to unspeakable postures of venereal exertion I posed for the the now infamous series of monotypes that came to be known as “Les Élégies de Pré-Apparaît.”
I have since forgiven Malaspina for taking advantage of my innocence and I have finally come to an understanding that genius justifies all.
Opening at Taylor de Cordoba,Culver City
I’m not typically an habitué of the Los Angeles vernissage scene, but a few weekends ago I found myself on a literal art crawl In the space of two hours I popped my head into Western Projects,Delphine Foveva, Cerasoli, Billy Shire, Black Cat, Koplin Del Rio, Roberts & Tilton, Boite, Taylor de Cordoba, Tin House and Perego Belfast. It was in the last gallery that I happened upon the most unusual and beautiful show.
In a group exhibition entitled Rosso/Muscolo, paintings, videos and photographs all loosely organized around the theme of commercialized sexuality presented an almost comprehensive overview of some of the most important contemporary artists who deal with this volatile subject. Scriabin, Malaspina, Fry, Schoffman, the art collective Mais Non! and several others each contributed 4 or 5 pieces.
The exhibition will soon travel to Barcelona, so if you live in the area, I highly recommend it.
The 48 Stations of Ecstasy
While attending a conference at the Havana Biennial I came across an eccentric exhibition of Soviet era artists’ books. Held at the famous Instituya para las Artes Gráficas on Avenue Simón Bolívar, the show included your basic communist agitprop. Handmade books depicting the the heroism of factory labor, the arithmetical valor of the Five Year Plan and the romance of sugar cane dominated the installation.
Much to my astonishment, displayed in a small plexiglass box was the original copy of Micah Carpentier’s 48 Stations of Ecstasy. Thought to be lost by most art historians, the 48 Stations is considered one of Carpentier’s seminal achievements.
I will be returning to Cuba in the fall on a José Martí Research Grant in order to investigate Carpentier’s work further. Among the books I hope to find are Los Diez Mandamientos, Caja de la Lluvia de Duchamp, and the legendary Pecho.
Severad Toumaud
Severad Toumaud tracked an unusual course in the Los Angeles artworld. A bon vivant and world class gourmand, Toumaud began collecting art when he exhausted the possibilities of collecting antiques. In his 4000 square foot Silverlake townhouse he has famously hosted the most eclectic dinner parties of the L.A. beau monde. Actresses and poets, street prophets and politicians, real estate moguls and itinerant folk singers all break bread around Toumaud’s Louis Phillipe hardwood dining table.
I met my dealer, the devoted gallerist Anna D’Abbraccio at Severad’s annual Candlemas party. At Nowruz a few years back, I got so drunk on pear wine I ended up going home with Niki Pest of the Soundtracks and had an unflattering picture of the two of us on the cover of the LA Weekly. I sat next to Micah Carpentier at a Shabbat dinner just two months before he was run over by a truck.
Severad Toumaud is a Los Angeles landmark and when he asked me to draw his portrait I agreed immediately.
I ended up drawing 250 portraits of him over the course of two years and will exhibit them next month at the Musée de Palaeontologie in Charleroi.
Art professors are known for their coinages, their quotable aphorisms and the odd metaphors they use to describe vague ideas on aesthetics. One of my former Critical Theory lecturers once compared Foucault to an ungracious sand gnat who after finding itself reincarnated as a human being maintained its voracious appetite for blood. A painting teacher used to describe any and all use of the color orange as “the cascading arcs of maloderous vomit”.
My favorite wordsmith, David Schoffman, was known equally for his wit and for his cruelty. He commonly referred to his graduate students as “the multitudes ignominiously paving a path toward labored anonymity.”
He has recently launched a website where he is peddling his drawings for $25 apiece.
Among the works are a series of nude self-portraits as seen from the back. I remember now how I loved him as much for his intellect as for his incredible physique.
I bought six drawings.
