ELE D’ARTAGNAN: AXIS BOLD AS LOVE By Todd Alden Ele D'Artagnan (1911 - 1987), a trained actor, self-taught artist, and vagabond extraordinaire who floated in and out of the Italian Surrealist scene made drawings employing a cosmic sexuality and psychedelic line that anticipates new directions by young artists today such as Devendra Banhart and Jeff Davis. Distinguished by a joyful eros, an inspired whimsicality, and a ferocious absurdity, D’Artagnan’s drawings and watercolors share daring affinities with Federico Fellini’s films in which D’Artagnan acted in no less than five: Il Bidone (1955), Tre passi nel delirio (I episodio "Toby Dammit") (1967), Amarcord (1973), Casanova Fellini (1976), and La cittŕ delle donne (1979). The actor/artist also appeared in bit roles in numerous films by other directors, including supporting roles along side Marcelo Mastroianni and Sophia Loren. D’Artagnan was born an orphan as “Michele Strinelli” in Venice in 1911. He adopted his artistic name, Ele D’Artagnan from an early bit role the Italian movie, The Three Musketeers around 1951. A steamer trunk full of approximately 400 of D’Artagnan’s works came to light several years ago; it was unearthed from D’Artagnan’s storage in a barrel warehouse in Testaccio, the same gypsy neighborhood in Rome where D’Artagnan last lived in a shanty and where Fellini frequently filmed. These visionary and libidinally charged drawings, have, for the most part, however, never previously been publicly exhibited before 2003. (Five of these were acquired by the Museum of Modern Art that year from the artist’s first exhibition at KS Art). D’Artagnan’s artistic scrapbook--also found in the trunk--traces him in photographs throughout the years with Dali, de Chirico, Mastroianni, and Gina Lollobrigida among others. Also preserved are newspaper clippings and documents noting that D’Artagnan claimed to be the unrecognized son of the great Italian composer, Toscanini to whom, it is also said, he bore a strong resemblance. D’Artagnan’s drawings and watercolors are drawn from the slipstream of a life fantastic—one that belongs to a disappearing era. Although these works did not find an audience during his lifetime and his Testaccio shanty was razed shortly before he died, combustible sparks of redemption remain in the artist’s erotic contours, fantastic landscapes, “trumpet houses,” and rainbow-like colors. D’Artagnan’s fervent imagery illuminates a lyrical and visionary eros, one that belongs, as the song goes, to the axis bold as love. His gloriously orphic poetics square off in direct opposition, of course, to the destructive spirit of thanatos which, in the present economy of permanent war, is no less powerful and no less necessary today. D’Artagnan’s drawings are bold as love. Just ask the axis.

home | gallery | exhibitions | contemporary | outsider | press | contact