Bálint Szombathy
G. A. CAVELLINI ON THE ROAD TO APOTHEOSIS

Guglielmo Achille Cavellini’s name has become inextricably linked with the art of today. His works are exhibited in the most prestigious galleries worldwide, but he is no stranger to the peripheries either. No one has managed to reign Cavellini in, and indeed he is not one who needs external support, managers or patrons; what he needs is lovers of the arts who are open to his eccentricities and planned distortions of art history. Cavellini is actually the inventor of self-historicism: from the early seventies he has been taking the course of history – that of his life and work – into his own hands.

Starting out from the premise that a living artist should not entrust his biography to the future hands of reckless chronicles, after his twelve books published so far, the thirteenth addition to these is the first part of his diary notes, titled The Diaries of Guglielmo Achille Cavellini, 1975. Cavellini’s biography from 1946 to 1975 can be read in the publication titled In The Jungle of Art, while the recently published diary notes are the first part of a larger series whose volumes Cavellini plans to publish annually.

His diary of 1975 focuses on his creative efforts, providing a faithful picture about the artistic milieu — Italian and international — which served as the background for Cavellini’s work which proliferated within a rather short time, although at the cost of serious spiritual, intellectual and financial investment. In the self-history notes titled 25 lettere and 25 quadri della Collezione Cavellini a fictitious life’s story unfolds, while the recently published diaries document the event of real life in texts and images; the only fictitious element is that the author named Johannes Gutenberg (!) as the publisher of his book. The dairies mainly stress Cavellini’s performances and exhibitions, and include some very palpable descriptions of the atmosphere of some of the art events, masterfully delivering the reactions his works induce when placed in alien environments.

Cavellini not only travels back into the past and ahead into the future on the wings of time: recently he has been appearing at every art-related event that holds the promise of placing his oeuvre in the limelight, and where he is welcomed as the immortal pope of art, a living legend. For example, this spring he was present at the Budapest premier of his works, and during the summer he participated in the festival of the West Coast Dadaists in Ukiah. Monty Cantsin gave an account of this exciting event:

"... I have been back for two weeks now and I am starting to re-acclimatise. I had a pile of letters waiting for me and I still have lots of replies to write, while I’m also preparing for my performance on Saturday and another one, which will be held on 6 July in Chicoutimi. And, as usual, I have no money just debts, and I am still hurting from an unfinished love affair but another one has also started in the meantime, leaving me no time for anything; despite it all, I’m trying to compose a longer letter to you to give you an account of the Ukiah (Ukiah-Haiku) festival and other things. I set off from Montreal on 25 April by coach; I mean I set off together with Lion Lazer but then we had to part ways on the border and he was transported back to Canada –they did not like his brain. The border patrol and the police are the same everywhere you go, did you know that? I waited for him a day to catch up in New York, thinking that he might give it another try to cross the border, but then he called me that he could not. I stayed at the Squat, as always. It is full of cranky bitches but I talked for a long time with Péter [Halász] and Sz. [Szitányi] Gábor and went out to a new wave club. I had two or three hours of sleep at the theatre around dawn and then continued my journey to San Francisco. Three days on a coach, the coach was going non-stop, the drivers taking turns at the wheel; you just pretend to be sleeping on such rides, you have plenty of time to think about all sorts.

I churned out postcards and posted one every time we stopped: in Cleveland, Chicago, Omaha, Cheyenne, Salt Lake City, Reno, Sacramento, San Francisco, and of course a lot of small towns and farms, and the prairie, prairie and the prairie again, and then finally some mountains, spring, summer and winter. I kept inserting coins in the food vending machines at the stops, I jotted down some events I felt were important, thinking one day I will be diligent enough to write a book. There was a guy next to me carrying a load of manuscripts; he told me he was on his way to Portland and he would try San Francisco too; he wanted to submit his manuscript to Ferlinghetti and co. He was straight out of Kerouac’s book, and a load of others were too, the only character missing was the girl with whom I could have got off the coach in a small town and she would have introduced me to her relatives.

I wrote a bunch of new songs and I kept asking myself: what am I exactly doing here, in Nebraska? And I asked myself the same thing in Utah, but I had no answer, I just kept on going and that was that, whichever way there was to go, bloody simple.
A few words from my diary: a red sunset, the toilet water splashes up onto my ass; fifteen minutes sleep; tusks of grass; two idiots sat next to me; spring, mist, sculptures; we’ll be there in a few minutes. My friend Yanagi was waiting at the station in Frisco. I got to know him in Paris two years ago, and I visited him on my trip to California. He’s bald; in Ukiah they called him the ‘Japanese punk-monk’. He was the one who shaved the chicks whose heads and bodies Cavellini inscribed with his dogmata. 
The festival was mostly about celebrating Cavellini; everywhere you looked there were Cavellini T-shirts, stickers, posters, newspaper articles and parades. On the evening of the day I arrived there was a reception in Cavellini’s honour at Dadaland, where I met lots of my old penpals: Anna Banana, Bill Gaglione, Judith Hoffberg, Pamela Rome, E. F. Higgins, Rockola, Russell Butler, Geoffrey Cook and others.
 
I found a young nurse straight away, who later took my blood in Ukiah. But now we’re in San Francisco, it’s evening at Dadaland: Cavellini is dressed up in a suit with his life story written all over it,costume with all sorts printed on it, everyone has something to present: books, magazines, rubber stamps, stamps, entries in books of memories, signatures, and there is a lot of organisation going on. Pamela is going to be in my performance as well, she’s a nice chick, new wave. I would go for her but Higgins beat me to it. Some people think I’m a queer because I’ve got a red coat. In the end, we ate and we drank and then I, Bibi and Cavellini went to Bibi’s place. Another chick came as well but we dropped Cavellini off at his hotel, then we drank rum, Yanagi came along, we finished the rum and went to his place.

This was the fifth day I hadn’t slept and I’d got so used to it that I thought it’d be stupid to even try it again, but then I passed out and slept my entire life away until noon the next day, but the whole time is a blank for me. I got up and went for a walk on Market Street, bought a pair of rubber gloves and some postcards. The sun was shining and there was a light wind. That’s the usual weather in San Francisco. I had a beer and tried to ring Suzanna but she’d moved and that was two years ago, and we hadn’t written much to each other since. In the end, I looked Suzanna up a week later and we even met but there was no point to it and I learned for the umpteenth time that you can’t retrace your steps. OK, let’s go on. The next day at noon we went to Ukiah in Yanagi’s Volkswagen minibus. Higgins, Pamela and Cook came with us. Everybody was in a bloody good mood, we drank, smoked everything and then Cook suddenly lost it and started shouting that we had to stop because he wanted to get out and go back to Frisco, and he couldn’t stand it anymore. Then, when Yanagi pulled up, Cook didn’t want to get out after all, he said he would come with us to Ukiah and he’d hitch a hike from there and then he aggressively asked Pamela and Higgins not to smooch in the van because he couldn’t stand that either and started his shouting, at which Yanagi stopped again and said either Cook had to get out or he wasn’t going any further. But then we drove on and Pamela and Higgins kept off the smooching all the way to Ukiah. What was behind all this was that Pamela and Cook had spent a night together at some time, Cook had taken it seriously and he’d imagined his future with Pamela, who knew nothing about this and had thought it was just a fling. So we got to Ukiah after three hour’s drive and we had four packed days of events. It started with a big dinner at the Saturday Club, which was buzzing with people and everyone scribbled their names on the wall by the entrance door, where there was a list of names from the members of the former Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich and all of the Dadaists. Abdada was waiting for us with his dyed orange hair, wearing yellowish green sunglasses and a dinner jacket; Abdada was from the West Coast Underground and had the mixed look of a Parisian Bohemian, a hippy and a punk. He could look like a goaty bearded professor, a tramp, a hooligan or a prophet. Affable words, a stern look, devilish laughter, precise definitions, a drunken lout, a nice Teddy Boy, a tired old man, a youth, a parrot, a teacher, a comedian, a seer: he could be any of these things, and there was his gorgeous, Turkish wife, Ishvahani, with her almost Chinese eyes in a black dress cut perfectly around her cleavage, and there were others there too, I reckon about two hundred people, many of whom had come to see the Toulouse Lautrec paintings, while others looked like they’d just stepped out of File magazine. There was a flowery-haired hippy girl with a guitar, but the hall was mostly filled with new wave types: homos looking like girls, dangerous looking punks, businessmen in ties and masculine-looking girls.
      
We sat down at a table with Buster Cleveland, Nancy Frank and Carl Loefler, but everybody kept standing up and walking about, then the lights went out and accompanied by guards someone dressed like an angel marched in with a flag, the flag of the West Coast Underground and gave a kind of opening speech, followed by an ovation, then hurrah, hurrah! Cavellini! Cavellini also made a toast, which was translated by Judith Hoffberg. Cavellini doesn’t know a word in a foreign language, well maybe he does speak a bit of French, but every word he uttered was greeted by rapturous applause, the bottles of red wine were quickly emptied, everyone drained their glasses to Cavellini and throughout the whole festival the master of Italian self-historicism put in his all with energy and humour, and very probably he was the only one who had tons of money as well.

After this, as the evening went on, everybody got their turn to say something, and under the title of sound poetry anyone could sign up for a five-minute production and so one after the other came the “poems”, which were totally crazy or not so crazy, sometimes lame, sometimes great and even right on, but no one can recall because everybody was pissed. It was all good, the point was just to do it, that was what was important; we’re here and that’s that, this is how we look, we’re useless, we are total pricks and we don’t give a toss about respecting the audience. “We’re the beautiful, powerful and victorious women of the future” was repeated in chorus by the chicks. They looked totally stupid, what else can I say, but this was what was needed, it was all recorded on video, you can watch it, a lot of goofing about and pure idiocy, I would’ve preferred to hide under the chair so I couldn’t see what idiots we were making out of ourselves. Then Cook turned up, he hadn’t gone to Frisco after all. As his first number he repeated about three times that “I’m Geoffrey Cook, I’m Geoffrey Cook, Tam …”, OK we laughed at this, then things changed, somebody whistled, then more and more people shouted “stop it Cook, enough” and then he steeled himself and declared that he wasn’t going to stop, and that he would read what he’d started to the end. This was really tragic; he groaned, then he started shouting and kicked the microphone to the floor screaming “fuck you”, “you bastards, I came here to say this, I paid my trip and I’ll say what I want.” Everybody was whistling and telling him to stop, at which he hurled the microphone at the floor and ran out. I swear to God it was beautiful, and with this the first evening came to an end.

I stayed there and hung about, and with a few others – Abdada, Buster Cleveland, Yanagi, Pamela, Higgins, Russell Butler, Nicky Vanzetti, Tommy Cramer, Polly Esther Nation – drank what was left in the bottles and in the end even swept up the rubbish. Then I slept in a garage, I didn’t even ask where I was or why, there was a tent creaking on the yard, I closed the door, and adieu! It was only May but it was beautiful and hot like summer. Ukiah is northeast of San Francisco and pretty far from the ocean so it’s always warm.

The sunshine in the morning was dazzling, Yanagi had slept in his Volkswagen, our heads were pretty sore. We went to have breakfast at a Chinese place and around noon the “market” started. Everybody got a table in the ballroom of the Palace Hotel so they could spread out their prints, postcards, rubber stamps and other works. There was a special Mail Art show on the wall, with giant postcard collections, a huge collection of badges; an old woman and old man were selling imitation flowers but there was no audience, no customers, I collected some new stamps in my passport and sold three or four Neo magazines.

The Los Angeles Dada group – Michael Mollett, Lon Spiegelman, and, if I remember correctly, Steve Durland – kept bringing rubber stamps. I’d never seen so many, Dadaland put out the Vile magazines, but who on earth had seven or fifteen dollars to buy them with? Gerald-Jupiter Larsen, who looked like a hippy-anarchist arrived from Vancouver and sold records, and the Frisco Postcard Palace was represented here too. I later visited them in Frisco at a little shop not far from Broadway. They sell artist’s postcards of varying quality, they organise exhibitions, have beautiful collections and their business is going well. Higgins’ special artistamps were the most popular, and he was probably the only one who was making money. This big, stereotypically American guy never stopped talking, he looked like a nice gangster. He lived in New York and worked as a furniture removal man.

Who else should I mention? There were loads of people but I had to go and find some pots for my performance. Jim Shaw had promised me one on the first evening so I went to find him at his house but he wasn’t at home. I hung about a bit, but I felt alone without a chick and this feeling stayed with me throughout the whole festival. There was Marija, a Swedish chick, but her shadow was there too, Nick, a Canadian guy. But in any case, we agreed on a date in Frisco – but she wasn’t there, or I’d gone to the wrong place. I looked for her for days, but it was in vain. I went to Portland and then to Vancouver, and when I was just walking there somebody appeared behind me. It was her, Marija. It’s not worth planning anything, it’ll just happen when it’s fated to happen.

The performances started in the afternoon. I didn’t see many of them, but I was there when Cavellini wrote his concept of life on the shaven heads of two chicks, Bibi and Ginny, and then Abdada inscribed the body of a really pretty girl. The hotel wouldn’t allow nudity so their intimate areas were covered up with Cavellini stickers. Cavellini was the star of the festival; he was an incredibly energetic and entertaining guy, a great comedian, and a fantastic photographic model, like you know him from his books. His performance finished up with an unexpected story: somebody from the audience walked up to him and plonked a cream cake on his head.

My performance came at the end of the show and it was already after midnight. The organisers had only got prepared for so-called stage performances: there was the stage with the audience in front of it. Everything needed to be re-arranged for my performance, and then the sound guy said the amplifiers had basically had it and he couldn’t play my tape. At this, Buster persuaded him to do it, but that took another fifteen minutes, and people started going home until there were only about sixty left. Yanagi and Pamela had got totally pissed and had slapped on a ton of make-up. The next few days, people were calling Yanagi the Japanese punk monk. He put on a fantastic illusory suicide act and strangled himself so realistically that I thought he’d died. He told me later that he really had been pulling the electric cable tight around his neck expecting Pamela to loosen it, but doing this hadn’t occurred to Pamela, who dressed in a skin tight imitation leopard-skin costume and was busy was throwing herself around and on the tables, after which she came over to light my fingers and head on fire, but at this point the hotel’s manager intervened in the act and dashed in to stop the place from burning down. It was a great scene but it made me fucking furious and I wanted to leave the whole thing, but then the manager finally left and there was fire, blood and everything. Roberta, the nurse chick, was freaked out but she did well: a test tube of blood went in the soup, a test tube of it in my mouth, and then I and Yanagi passed it from mouth to mouth. Pamela would have liked me to give her some too; a bloody kiss for Pamela.

After the performance we went to some pub and Pamela and I smooched in the car on the way. She’s a sexy chick, she’s visiting Higgins right now in New York, and then she might come here and after that she’s going to Italy. Her home address is P. O. Rome c/o Fais, Via Costantini 94, Roma 00194, write to her, she’ll be there for two months.

The next day it was the Cavellini parade. The police stopped the traffic around the hotel in the city centre and all the participants together with a load of tourists paraded down the road. Cavellini was at the head of the procession in an open car covered from head to toe in Cavellini stickers, standing and waving like a president. Sitting behind him were Bibi, Ginny and Yanagi, the three baldies, with the marchers following them: a bunch of idiots, clowns, crazies, exhibitionists, or let’s say Dadaists; trombones, trumpets, donkeys, a roller-skating banana (Anna), flags, banners, inscribed boards, madmen, buffoons, maddening heat and sweat. Cavellini got out of the car and sat in a throne set up on an ornamented platform, frantic jubilation, flourish, hurrah!, posing, photographers, video. The whole thing looked like lunatics celebrating the king of the mad. Probably this festival would look different if it was in, say, Europe or a more gloomy part of the world, but in California with its brilliant sunshine, fine and cheap wines nobody bothers with politics, everybody can easily find a lover, “havin’ fun” is what they say the most – parties, fancy dress balls, swimming, good weed, music, the hippy lifestyle and flowers in the barrels of guns. I’m actually ashamed to say it but everyone found the whole Cavellini parade as well as the fashion and dance evening mind-blowingly boring, and I still have no friggin’ idea why we were celebrating that Cavellini is a great guy. In the end, the whole thing was a piece of Cavellini’s oeuvre, and the old goat knew perfectly well how to make himself into a star, and as one of his assistants I can only congratulate him on this, it really was good.

On the last day the whole group went swimming in a nearby lake and then everybody just split and went their own way. I’ll write about the rest of it later, I’m amazed that I managed to get this much scribbled down. It’s damn hot and the whole city is rotten, I don’t feel like doing anything. Kantzin.”

In conclusion, G.A. Cavellini is going to send a copy of any of his books free of charge to anyone interested. glory to thee, the great son of Italy!

*Source: Bálint Szombathy: G. A. Cavellini a megdicsőülés útján, [G. A. Cavellini on the Road to an Apotheosis], Híd [Bridge], 9 December 1980, pp. 1487–1494.


(English translation: Krisztina Sarkady-Hart)