Exhibit: Vittorio Scarpati & Cookie Mueller
Artforum reviews a gallery show in London: ‘This is the first time that Italian artist Vittorio Scarpati’s final project, Putti’s Pudding, 1989, has been shown outside the US. Although included in Nan Goldin’s exhibition “Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing,†at New York’s Artists Space in 1989, Putti’s Pudding was originally conceived as a book. Working in collaboration with his wife, Cookie Mueller, the influential writer and actress, Scarpati created hundreds of felt-tip works on notepad paper—populated by knights, angels, fools, and beasts—some in black ink but most in lurid color, which narrate the grueling experience of living with AIDS in the 1980s (both died of the disease in 1989). Though Mueller and Scarpati’s collaboration is rife with fear and uncertainty, an ethereal kind of joyousness and strength manage to shine through.’
