Honor the Creator within,
and honor the path that is right for you.


Sun 1.15.12


I went to see the "Maurizio Cattelan: All" exhibition at the Guggenheim last night having a vague idea from the reviews I read about this irreverent rebel of an artist what his work was like. There was a line starting from the museum that snaked all the way from 5th Ave to Madison and halfway across that avenue when I got there.

What an exhibit! (See www.guggenheim.org, and click, left hand side, "On View Now, Special Exhibitions, Maurizio Cattelan: All, November 4, 2011ÐJanuary 22, 2012.") The exhibit entails all of his work from 1989 to present. Check the video to see how it was installed. That alone is a work of art in itself. Everything is hung from the ceiling of the rotunda, but installed in such a way that as one travels up the circular ramps of the Guggenheim different art works come to view.

Cattelan eschewed the traditional way of exhibiting retrospectives in a linear chronological way as he thought them meaningless. One's art does not necessarily become more nuanced or refined with time. As a matter of fact, sometimes the opposite is true. Sophistication can interfere with original ideas in a jaded way. "First thought, best thought," said Allen Ginsberg.

Cattelan, like myself, had a rough start in life and was forced to work at menial, drudge jobs so that he was quite fearful of failure when he started out as an artist, being constantly late producing work for exhibitions, not showing up, etc. Consequentially, a lot of his work deals with death. He portrays 9/11 as the death of idealism, with JFK and what he represented to us, barefoot, dead in a coffin; horses (he is an adept taxidermist) hung from the rafters, Hitler, on his knees supplicating; the pope prostrate having been hit by a meteorite, some children, punished, abused, hung by the neck, all of it sad, funny, bizarre, like life.

I dreamt about the Bear at night. When it appears in my dreams, it refers to my writing. The Bear is always frightening, crashing through my safe middle class life, ripping through walls with its powerful claws. It is the Bear who indicated in a dream that I had to fight for my integrity, my dignity, my rights if I was to write anything authentic in my life. In my dream last night, the Bear appeared in my home playing on the floor, more of a cub than a full grown adult. I wasn't screaming or hysterical, but tentative, I could see its powerful claws with the nails extended. No, no, I said, the Bear has to go outside. On waking up, I realized that I was wrong, I must embrace the Bear, take it to heart.

I am finally finishing the novel "Converting Hull 1042," have been working at it for the past few months after a 3 year hiatus battling for my home in the courts; The Bear must be appeased. It's a mystery to me how the process of creating stops and starts seemingly with a will of its own. Learning to let go, and not try to control it, to master the anxiety of what will be exposed, because quite frankly it can kill you, is learning to live with the Bear.

```````````````````````````````

Current favorite this past month has been Wake Up II