Friday 3 June 2011

Today I am a fan of Tim Anderson

In 1995 I met Tim Anderson when I was selling oil paintings atop the overlook at Piazzale Michelangelo in Florence.  There was this strange guy staring at my paintings, his cute nose almost touching the canvases.


He was probably smelling them because when Tim looks at an artwork he must experiences with all his six senses.   I had the luck to visit the MOMA with him and see a museum the way Tim does.  A painting is not just a painting, it is hung on the wall a certain distance from the floor, on a tilt and the frame is from whatever period by whoever.  We ran around the museum like we were on magic mushrooms and when we hit the Robert Rauschenberg show were hammered, beaten, torn to pieces then walked out on our knees.


Tim is a walking encyclopedia with a moleskin in his pocket.  His moleskins are filled with drawings and tickets from his travels that writes about, comments on.


I asked the bizarre guy if he was an artist and yes, oh yes. The Beverly branch of the Chicago Public Library hired him and paid him to paint Faces of Chicago, for their walls, a permanent collection.

Tim was raging through Europe in Mercedes Station Wagon and just happened to be staying at Nittardi, the Tuscan villa of one of his German gallerists, a few stones throw down the dirt path from the house I was renting on top of a hill between La Piazza and San Donato in Collina.

We made plans to meet for wine and cheese, he said he'd drive up the hill in the Mercedes. I agreed and wondered what kind of car it was. Later that night, back in the country where the dogs barked all night and mysteriously disappeared, Tim arrived on foot sweating like a wild boar with a bottle of Nittardi in hand. He didn't realize that you needed a 4x4 to scale the road. Tim said he'd been to a wine tasting and when they'd asked him what he thought about the aftertaste he'd said, "It tastes like burnt rubber."

Viva Tim!

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