Art Bastard (2016) is a visual feast, a documentary on Robert Cenedella, a subversive and provocative artist, as he calls what he does "satirical painting," a figurative painting style he developed as a protégé of German artist George Grosz, his teacher at the Art Students League in New York.
Like the prankster-artist Ray Johnson, Cenedella admits his politically incorrect pranks started early. In high school, he says “I wrote an article on the atom bomb drills… I felt a need to write this because the atom bomb drills were so stupid.” These exercises were used to induce fear and obedience and consisted of children being programmed to “drop, duck and cover.” When a teacher would yell “Drop!” students were supposed to dive under their desks with their hands clutched around their heads – preparing for the nuclear holocaust.
Cenedella continues – “I had an AB Dick mimeograph machine and I printed 2000 of these articles… I had to sign a loyalty oath and I couldn’t do it -- and then I was expelled.”
As a painter, Cenedella found himself increasingly marginalized by the art-gallery world of New York, which embraced Pop Art and Abstract Expressionism – but not his style of figurative satirical painting. He says – “I’ve been told by galleries – ‘You missed the boat. This kind of art is over with.’ Again I’m not legitimate.”
Later when he wanted to put a back cover ad in Gallery and Studio Art Magazine called “Un Homage del Maestro Rothko” -- a Rothko painting that had “BULLSHIT” scrawled on top of it – he met with resistance. Editor Ed McCormack says bluntly, “Bob’s a pain in the ass” -- because if he published the ad, he would be seen as disparaging an Art World Icon [Rothko], and if he didn’t, it would be perceived as censorship.
In another bitch slap aimed at the Art Establishment, Cenedella says – “I’m going to do an art show that will get more publicity than even Andy Warhol. I called it Yes Art.”
Actually making fun of a sacred cow like Warhol worked – but nobody got the joke. He was encouraged to continue painting in this Pop Art style, yet he knew he couldn’t do it with a straight face. “I did this show as the ‘end of art,’” Cenedella explains, “And then I didn’t do art for 10 years.”
During the Sixties, he continued to support himself by mocking the then current fad of Elvis worship making buttons that said “I like Ludwig [Beethoven].” He also had a business in which he made dart boards featuring the corrupt Presidents “Tricky” Dick Nixon and LBJ [Lyndon Baines Johnson] as targets. Tongue in cheek, he says “I was taking violence off the streets and putting it in your living room.” Ironically after being interrogated by the FBI, they asked if they could have a dart board.
(How times have changed! In today’s environment, Cenedella could have been charged with terrorism under the so-called Patriot Act.)
His next act of subversive art, which was also censored was a Christmas painting of Santa Claus hanging on a cross. “It was more than they could take,” says Cenedella. “They said ‘Santa Claus does not belong on a cross.’”
The title of the film Art Bastard is a reference not only to the “illegitimacy” of Cenedella in the New York Art World, but also his discovering the truth about his family. “When I was 21,” says Cenedella, “my mother says ‘I have something to tell you.’ She was drunk. She said ‘Daddy is not your father.’ And I remember very clearly ‘Oh is it Russ?’”
It turns out that Russell Speirs, a professor of English at Colgate University, was his bio-dad. “Then I got a letter from Russ who said it must have been quite a revelation to you,” Cenedalla says laughing. “And that was the end of that. And it was forcing me to be a liar to have a relationship to someone who is your father and you never called him your father. We never talked about it. It just gets outrageous. I think it affected my painting tremendously.”
This incident was then turned into a painting called “Father’s Day,” (1977) which showed the two fathers, the bio-dad Russ vs. the presumptive dad Bob Sr. boxing in a ring. “I’m drawing this as a satirical on boxing...,” he continues. “This was definitely a painting where I was doing therapy on canvas.”
Other politically incorrect paintings in this historical-satirical vein include “Southern Dogs”(1965) which reference the Selma Riots by showing cops with snarling dog heads instead of human heads.
Then he painted “Corporate Warfare (1980) in which a battle tank with a Coca Cola logo is up against a tank with a Mobil logo and a tank with a Chase logo and “Wall Street: A Stock Odyssey” (2001), which makes fun of Wall Street banksters and which was bought by the film’s producer Chris Concannon.
In an interview with this author, Cenedella says – “I’m the most widely written about ‘unknown artist’. I’ve been written up a lot, but not by the art world. The art world has kind of boycotted me because I take shots at the art world. I don’t play their game. Let’s put it that way.”
So how did he as an artist toiling in relative obscurity in New York City get a movie deal? “It happened over a 10 year period. The movie was on and off again. There were various directors and it looked like it would never get done. And then we got this guy [director] Victor Kanefsky who really pulled it together. We knew we had a lot of good footage over the years like interviews about my Santa Claus painting. This movie has had over 50 articles and over the years I’ve done things that were noteworthy and all this got put together in this film.”
“I think that in the art world everyone has been fooled by the Emperor’s New Clothes and it’s become a farce. I think the reason this movie has been written about so widely I just came out and said it in my own way and put my own work out. I don’t think that if I was an abstract painter I don’t think I would have had any articles written. I seem unique because I’m from the old school. I paint what’s around me and I paint stories. Storytelling was a no-no. They’d say that’s not art that’s illustration and they’ve gotten away with this all these years. Now it’s so damn boring that even the critics don’t even have anything to write about anymore."
You could call Southern Dogs politically-incorrect figurative painting. It has a uniquely mordant sense of humor since the cops had dog heads – not pig heads.
“The painting was done when the Selma Riots were going on in 1965,” Cenedella explains. “At the time it fired up the country. It got a lot of coverage in the press and that was the first time you saw policemen using dogs to put down ‘unrest.’ That’s what police were always called -- ‘pigs.’”
“Chris Concannon [the producer of Art Bastard] bought one painting from me called ‘2001 A Stock Odyssey’ and because he’s a financial printer, he got interested in that one because I was selling stock in a single painting which had never been done before,” he continues. “The stock was that you would buy a very beautiful print of the picture. So if you had 500 shares, the idea being that if the painting got more famous and then the painting sells for a million dollars, you could turn your shares in and get part of the profits. That’s one of the things that got written up in the New York Times and that’s part of the movie.”
So what’s next? “I’m continuing to paint and I’ve been getting lots of calls,” Cenedella continues. “People want to come to my studio. We’ll see what happens, but definitely there’s more interest in the art because so many people saw the film and then they say how cone we didn’t know anything about you before. And I say I’m the most widely unknown artist and the art world has never acknowledged my work.”
So is Super Gallery Dealer Larry “Go-Go” Gagosian knocking at your door? “The truth is he went to the distributor and asked for a copy of the film which he wanted to see privately. But we don’t know what happened after that. The guy who’s suing Gagosian whose name is Ron Perelman who’s a big collector is suing him. Both of these men in the same week asked to see the film."
“The art world has become like a new stock market,” Cenedella continues. “In other words, when you’re selling a canvas for $50 million, I question whether that money really actually trades hands. They don’t care what the art is anymore.
It makes you wonder if these auction records or private sales are simply camouflaging some kind of illicit transaction. The lack of transparency in the art world is staggering.
Can you say "money laundry"?
“I’m convinced of it,” Cenedella adds. “I know that in the 1980s you could sell a piece for $50,000 and you got a lot of drugs with it. Just think logically – if you spent $100,000 on a painting… You have to know that somewhere they’re either going to be propping it up – the way they would do a stock. So an artist who is floundering a little bit and the ‘investors’ [collectors] are saying, Hey, I spent all this money for this nonsense. So they give him a show. Or you get a show at the Whitney. You give them a donation and then they get a show. But it’s all hype -- like a stock.
“Look at Jeff Koons. He was a stockbroker. So he goes into the art world and he boasts about the fact that -- He can’t draw -- He can’t paint -- He can’t sculpt. But then he gets other people to do something and then he signs it.
“The art world has no regulations. It’s just this giant new business calling itself ‘Art.’ So I always say -- I don’t ask ‘What is art’? I ask ‘What isn’t art?’
“And if you ask any dealer what isn’t art? He would never tell you. They would never say because they don’t know themselves. Your ‘left shoe’ might become art – and if they can sell it, it’s art.”
So what kind of a philistine would you have to be to have that kind of a mindset?
Would you be an art dealer? Or would you be a gallerist or a “dealer”? Or would you be a so-called “curator”?
“That’s right. Look at what they did to Morley Safer [referencing the infamous 60 Minutes segment on Art Basel Miami Beach] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mHVy_hH8vc
“It was great. That’s how I got to meet him. And we became really good friends. But he got beaten up by the New York Times. Michael Kimmelman -- they did a hatchet job on him. So did Charlie Rose. The art world couldn’t stand a guy just coming out and saying this. It was kind of a mild thing, but I loved it. It was great.”
So did Morley Safer buy any of your paintings by the way? “He has some of my stuff,” replies Cenedella nonchalantly. Morley Safer of course has passed away.
And so that’s what we do – we “practice” art without a license…
PIECE by URI DOWBENKO
http://www.UriDowbenko.com as well as New Improved Art http://www.NewImprovedArt.com.
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