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Some Thoughts on the Life and Mail Art of
Carlo Pittore
by Mark Bloch
Written: September 15, 2004
I always wondered why Carlo Pittore spent
so much time painting when he was such a magnificent mail artist. He can
have all the "fame and fortune" he wants with his humorous, profound,
plentiful mail art. Charles Stanley, or whatever his real name is, is not
nicknamed "Carlo Mail Art." Pittore means "painting" and THAT, in fact, is
the nom de plume he loves to use because Carlo Pittore loves to paint. I
seem to remember that he was named that by some painters in Italy and it
became a red and green badge of honor that he has worn ever since on a red
and green jacket that he wears over a red and green shirt.
In addition to being in love with Italy
and its tradition of sensual beauty- sensual meaning beautiful things to
see, like red and green and the works of Michelangelo and Raphael, and also
to eat, to hear, to feel in those ways that Italians have always done so
well, he could also be one of those people that Marcel Duchamp said was "in
love with the smell of turpentine." I am pretty sure Carlo would also wear
THAT intended proto-conceptual put-down as yet another badge of honor
because he does love turpentine because he loves the oil paints that the
turpentine meanders through and tickles and brings to life. He LOVES
painting. He loves paint. He loves TO paint. It is not an exaggeration. He
loves the act of painting, he loves thinking about painting, he loves
talking about paintings and painters, and he loves looking at paintings. He
paints portraits of his friends. He paints portraits of mail artists that
visit him. He finds students who he enthusiastically teaches about painting
and then he paints portraits of them. He paints pictures of poets and
musicians and other painters. He painted lots of boxers at one time. He
paints people with no interest in boxing, for instance once he painted me.
I posed for a large portrait depicting me
as my alter ego Pan-- the Greek demigod of fields forests and flocks. Carlo
posed me with my right leg up, my left arm up, my mouth open and my right
hand holding a panpipe in front of my chin. It gave us a long time to talk
and I remember it fondly. Carlo urged me to start a publication to trumpet
news from New York to the worldwide network of mail artists. Carlo urged me
to bring my gesamtkunstverk, The Last Mail Art Show to completion. Carlo
urged me to interview his friend and mentor Bern Porter. He urged me to
paint and he urged me to draw. He admonished me to do my best work. I wish I
had taken more of his suggestions. He invited me to parties and events and
shows where I met wonderful people. The best people in New York always were
friends of Carlo! But that was play and this was work. If it were not for
those sessions in his studio I might never have known just how much he loves
painting but also just how much he loves the international mail art network.
But more importantly, I suspect that one thing that they share in his eyes
is the call to do ones very best. Carlo was the one that told me about the
laurel wreath that the triumphant Olympic athletes of ancient times wore on
their victorious heads to signify they had reached the highest pinnacles of
human achievement. Thus was it impossible for me to watch the 2004 Olympic
games from Athens without thinking of Carlo and his call to do my very best.
Thank you, Carlo!
Speaking of how things may appear to
Carlo's eyes, he called the window gallery that displayed international mail
art onto East Tenth Street the "Galleria dell'Occhio" or "Gallery of the
Eye." When there was not mail art in that window (visible from the street
but accessible only from a trap door in his studio) he would proudly display
his latest paintings there. And there was always a new one. (Just as there
was always new mail art he sent out. Indeed he pushes envelopes!) I remember
the many artists that showed mail art and related ephemera there. People
from New York and people visiting from far away lands. But I also remember
he showed the boxer paintings and I remember the portrait he showed there of
graffiti artist Keith Haring who later skyrocketed to fame thanks to his
drawings in the subway as well as the Fun Gallery, just down the block,
which turned art-for-the-people-art into Art World art.
Despite a healthy distance he keeps
between himself and the Art World, Carlo loves people too. That's another
thing that mail art and painting share. He is not a painter of abstracts or
still-lifes. He loves to interact with people. He loves good gossip (please
don't tell anyone) and good conversation and he loves controversy and he
hatches plots and plans and he discusses them and refines them and molds
them with his painting subjects as he paints. He loves new and exciting
things and though mail art has been around for a long time, he finds the
freshness in it.
Perhaps he chooses mail art but keeps his
eye on the Art World because he loves anything that will make him "rich and
famous." Carlo often uses the romantic term "rich and famous." But I think
it is secret code for "appreciated and loved." I remember once when a group
of us mail artists posed for a group photo at Katz's Deli, he bellowed in
his best, familiar, makeshift, improvised, half-serious, half-hilarious
operatic tenor "Smile your best smile... for we will all be rich and famous
some day!" to no tune in particular. Mail art will not make Carlo rich (nor
will his singing) but it has already made him famous. He is famously
wonderful, he is wonderfully, famously enthusiastic, he is wonderfully,
famously, enthusiastically prolific and adept when it comes to mail art. We
are all richer as a result of our exposure to him. (He is loved and
appreciated.) He loves mail art and it shows. Not only did he tell me as he
painted me, but he shows me with his actions. In the things he sends to me,
in the things he sends to others. In the things he sends to me to send to
others, just like he shows a worldwide network of people in mail art and
today in e-mail. So a guy who loves to paint makes mail art too. He is
constantly painting yet his contribution to mail art has been brilliant.
Carlo Pittore is the Everyman of mail art, in a visual story already told by
his exquisite creation Pittore Euphorico. He paints with red and green
paint, he draws with thick black pen and ink and he collages his face over
any face he can find. The world of everyday people becomes the very creative
magical world of Pittore Euphorico. I am euphoric just thinking of it. He
transforms long pages of faces into laughable litanies of his face by
shamelessly overprinting the Euphorico face across them. Anything, any face,
is fodder for his classical Italian happy hat, distinctive glasses and that
ubiquitous Euphorico moustache and beard which he often, but not always,
wears on his own face. He has a great facility for lovingly defacing every
face by transforming them all into his Everyface.
Carlo makes up stickers and rubberstamps
with inspiring slogans on them. He has a rubberstamp that says something
like "International Mail Art is the most important, far-reaching and longest
lasting art movement in the world today." And without his input it would not
be true. Throughout the Eighties, he made it so. And he called it
"International" Mail Art for a reason. He mails globally and works locally.
He connects people all over the world. Many would pass through New York and
stay at his apartment-- always the place to meet the visitors. Then Carlo
made Maine famous and himself too by calling Maine by its
abbreviation- the glorious state of ME!!!!!!!! He called his magazine ME and
filled it with the work of his own AND his colleagues from around the
planet. He created a world within a world called the Ntity that was
short-lived yet important and boy was it fun while it lasted-- thanks to
Carlo at the vortex! He also took one of those ads for inexpensive return
address stickers and used it cleverly. Instead of ordering them to say his
return address, he put in an order for several little pithy 3-line sayings.
His favorite is "There's only two seasons in Maine-- winter and the fourth
of July." When I think of this phrase I must admit it is enhanced by my
memories of him singing it with lots of musical embellishment as he
tirelessly painted my portrait. Yes, Carlo lives to sing, in paint and in
pen and ink, in words and even with his voice. His beautiful esophagus has
been the gatekeeper for many an inspiration! He can't sing or act but he is
the Commedia Del Arte personified. His mere presence as a thought in one's
mind calls forth everything wonderful about Italian opera. He is the comedy
as well as the tragedy; he is all of the pathos and all of the ecstasy
personified in a self-effacing yet larger than life way. Smoky Robinson
sang, "Just like Pagliacci did, he has to keep his feelings hid." Carlo did
not keep his feelings hid. He is a Pagliacci that is proud, that is
passionate about sharing his thoughts and emotions with the world. He shouts
his feelings from the rooftops and they are powerful words that later find
their ways into manifestos and slogans. He sings without self-consciousness
like the boldest, animated characters of Verdi, of Puccini, and of Rossini.
But he pierces any hint of stale anachronism with the contemporary mirth of
a Fellini energized by a Nino Rota soundtrack. But playing at an art theater
in the USA.
Pittore has led several legendary fights.
Some of his greatest battles ran simultaneously with those portraits of
boxers. He parries and punches like a warrior for the rights of the artist.
He does not let artists be pushed around by the "support system" of the Art
World.
Galleries, museums, curators,
critics--all have been Carlo's opponents but never enemies. Carlo Pittore
often says "Artists Must Lead." I do not believe that Carlo sees the Art
World as his nemesis, only a stubborn student. In his own quest to lead and
upgrade the business of art to a higher plane where he believes the
spirit-filled content of art rightfully resides, perhaps he was caught off
guard once too often, causing his outer punch-drunk Pagliacci to internalize
this sacred fight. Thus did his red-hot inner and outer battles become one.
Meanwhile, because he is human and vulnerable, emotion seeps out in these
contests-cum-causes in a range that stretches from humility to bravado to a
quixotic rage. Those of us that stand by his side, as well as those he
appears to oppose, (he would welcome them in an instant under the right
circumstances) know better than he might that what he vigorously protects is
the pure creativity of his own inner artist child that he carries with him
in a lovingly transparent way. A secret underdog is defending itself
doggedly against the course, brute force of life's inequities. Fortunately,
this tension permanently manifests itself more durably in the intelligence,
sensitivity and precision of his paintings AND his mail art.
Many are the times that I have passed on
to other artists some of the ideas that I have learned from Carlo. When he
says "Artists Must Lead" I think he envisions a world in which the
uninspired would simply take their cues from the creative, instead of the
other way around. (Because the uninspired have lead and it does not seem to
be working.) As I (and others?) carry that message with us in the world,
Carlo's idea fans out. May it continue for a long time.
I do not know where Carlo gets his ideas.
I am sure many are original brainstorms--I've seen them--but if any ripple
into his world from elsewhere, he will be the first one to tell us. Carlo
recycles. He recycles the classics. He recycles the winners of yesterday's
laurel wreaths. He recycles other people's envelopes and makes them his own.
He recycles age-old techniques. Carlo taught me to use pen and ink again--
on my mail art, as he did. One can find ballpoint pen in Carlo's mail art--
but not often. He likes things new and fresh but deep down he is an
old-fashioned guy. He brings the classical, old school ideas to mail art in
a new way. His Pittore Euphorico faces superimposed over other faces, making
them unmistakably his own, are symbolic of the way he superimposes this
classical energy over the postmodern international network he loves.
It is well known that Ray Johnson, the
creator of mail art before it had a name, brought hundreds of people
together. But it was Carlo that brought me together with Ray-- at a party in
his studio on Tenth Street. That was the same studio where Bern Porter led
us in chants of "Hail Nancy Reagan" before a long, serious meeting in which
we collectively and democratically deconstructed our network and charted a
course for the future. Carlo was a leader in mail art and a catalyst between
Mail Art and the outside world, including Maine and the East Village art
scene. And he influenced the latter at a critical moment in history. The
important Galleria dell'Occhio that brought mail art and Carlo Pittore to
the attention of everyone who mattered in Manhattan at that time was sorely
missed when he finally packed up his things and turned his operations into
The Academy of Carlo Pittore in Maine, permanently. But before he did, it
was in his apartment that he brought together artists and creative
people from all over the neighborhood and all over the world-- over large
bowls of spaghetti with lots and lots of garlic that he cooked while his
guests sat at his kitchen table watching and talking. In a crowded room he
once whispered to me his secret. He said, "Use much more garlic than you
would ever believe that you should, under any circumstances. Then add a lot
more." Such unforgettable but careful excess in the service of tasty, tangy,
zesty sustenance is also Carlo's recipe for life. Whether he is in the
over-stimulating world of Manhattan or the quiet serenity of Bowdoinham,
Maine, Carlo can always be counted on to live his life with a transferable
verve and gusto that is second to none. He inspires everyone that he meets,
in person, on paper, in or on an envelope; in print as well as in oil paint.
He is a man who not only picked up his red and green spirit somewhere in the
mountains of bella Italia but also can and does MOVE mountains with his
faith, good spirit and energy. He lives like a man who knows things keep
getting better. Sure there is hardship but no one else tackles it with such
panache. I've heard that the word "enthusiasm" has its root in the phrase
"theos" or "with god" and indeed, the creative forces of the universe show
themselves in the enthusiastic smile of of Carlo Pittore.
I will never forget my first in-person
meeting with Carlo in 1982. I was a relative newcomer to the network, having
come from five years in a Los Angeles mail art scene that seemed to amplify
my isolation. In the only local collaborative project I ventured into, I was
never asked to be more than a stamp-licker. What a contrast when I moved to
New York! One night at an evening of performances to honor the visiting mail
art and self-historification maestro G.A. Cavellini, I saw the enormous,
welcoming smile of Carlo beaming down on me from above in the stairwell of
the West Village auditorium that had, moments earlier, seemed unfamiliar and
lonely. Suddenly I was sure of my role. He instantly made me feel welcomed--
a much-needed contributor to the scene. He encouraged me, he affirmed me, he
brought out creative powers dormant within me. His smile, then as now,
invited me to collaborate.
I suspect from the many people who love
and admire him that this is Carlo's effect on everyone that he meets. It is
true he can and does emit this life-affirming glow through his oil paintings
but it has always been my belief that he does so even more effectively and
efficiently in the medium of the mails. Surely his life and his oil painting
are woven inextricably through his mail art. His contribution to mail art as
a visual artist is unparalleled and important but his greatest function has
always been to illustrate something more elusive but no less unparalleled
and important, qualities of boldness and leadership that emanate from the
immeasurable, timeless enthusiasm that lies within his heart.
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