Life and death

It seems the task of survivors and women to tend to the grave and to keep memories alive. Tony was buried in Chloride and can be visited at the Chloride Cemetery, behind the enclosed old cemetery in the middle. He wanted a natural headstone. This one in front reminded me of the canyons he would draw.
He was afraid to die, had been so since his return from Indochina where he got stuck for six month and saw the execution of thousands of people in the streets of Shanghai, when Shanghai fell. He remembered their eyes for ever. But then at other moments he celebrated life,like in this whimsical painting: love and peace and wild dancing.

Landscapes

In the dark Forest expresses a dark mood, the title refers to The Divine Comedy by Dante: In the middle of my life, in a dark forest I lost my way...

The landscapes in Tony Mafia’s work are dreamscapes, private places he shares with us, an escape from or dive into an oppressing reality. Nothing is literal or straightforward realism even if in some paintings or drawings the Flemish Polder or the Arizona desert and mountains are easily recognized as a setting, even individual rock formations that have a story, a name or nickname. Although captured in the solidity of paint and sure brushstrokes these dream spaces are often enigmatic, ethereal yet forceful.


In European culture the landscape being painted is unconscious, doesn’t know, nor react. The viewer places himself outside of it and feels him/herself to be separate from it. Tony rather ‘portrays‘ a landscape because he the painter is part of the landscape and in constant interaction with it. The landscape is alive and on the canvas or paper. It speaks to the viewer and expects those that listen when they walk, run or rest in it.

Impressions

Tony would say: I am the fastest brush in the West... Sometimes his work resembled action painting, dancing in front of the canvas. He liked to paint with an audience, and played to them. Once the public gone he scrutinized his work and felt bad if he had done something just for effect at that moment and then worked with the problem he created. Sometimes he left his painting quasi 'unfinished'. To him all was there. He called it impressionism, knowing that it was not the of impressionism of Manet or Monet. Sometimes Tony Mafia called it expressionism, knowing it wasn't that really, or South Western... In truth he was of no school, not of one direction... He was just a brush. The Bather is an example of a simple but effective painting. You can feel the cold water flowing over her back into the tub. Can't you?

Self portraits

There are quite a few self portraits of Tony Mafia around. He might depict himself as a lover, lonely waiting like in the painting Lone song, painted in Chloride in 1991. In it he offer flowers and his brush, the desert and musicians. Often he represents himself as a painter and a visionary: note the five eyes and the turkey buzzard on his pallet. You'll feel his fear of death, the failing of his heart. Actually the really big canvas is a double portrait and the past and present of our life in Chloride. He supported my interest in Indian lore and my activism for peace, hence the Hopi kachina and the white peace doves. He has donned a harlequin image here because the painter and the fool can show the truth as long as they behave as court jesters... Often his self portraits show him as an Indian.




A real nice photo of Tony as a younger man with his then wife Anna Mors in the background.

The dancer

Did you know that Tony was a dancer and an actor? For six weeks he took ballet classes with a very good teacher, auditioned and landed a role in a musical as a chorus boy in Houston Texas. it was a famous musical, but I forgot the title. He also was one of the woodcutters in Blood wedding by Garcia Lorca and understudy for the lead role. He had to replace the lead only once and in his own words 'I sucked'. He also followed the classes with Lee Strasberg in the Actors Studio while living in New York. He did some work for TV. The director of 'The Missing Melody' Bernard L. Kowalski has work by Tony Mafia.
He often painted dancers. He like the fluidity of the movements and the attitudes. This painting is called Throwing flowers at the misty mountains.

Abstracts

After the sweeter, more romantic images of the last days, some abstract work seem to be called for. Tony seemed to have to go through the different way of expressing what he wanted to say in his different moods. He did abstractions in watercolor, in mixed media on paper and in oil. Sometimes he would still hint at the representation like in the Race Horse shown further down. The vague suggestion of ears and eyes seems to suffice. In the abstract Indian painting he uses the iconography of the petroglyph, mainly water symbols. The grayish background cold suggest rock and this painting could be read as an abstract landscape. Tony Mafia was rather pleased with how this canvas turned out.

Mohave Museum of History and Arts

The Rainbow of the Kachina was painted in Chloride in 1998. A few years later I donated it to the Mohave Museum of History and Arts.
Admittedly the museum is more about the early aboriginal inhabitants of the area, the ranchers and miners and the railroad than about art. Yet it has two paintings of Tony Mafia: one loose sketch and the painting hanging in the directors office. Shannon Rossiter always had his door open and has the brochures and information about Tony, so visitors are welcome to sit down and listen and talk about Tony's art. I felt it was important for Tony's work to be somewhere in his chosen region, seen in the public domain.

Murals II

Free Spirit has a small antique and original jewelry shop. She is surrounded by two Mafia's murals. The Indian theme matches the local: the rooms of an old stagecoach stop. The rooms were build for the passengers in case of overnight repairs. Later followed the miners and soon the fans of Tony's work will flock to this place. These murals are more romantic than what Tony would normally paint within the Indian inspiration of his work. The roughness of the adobe mud and plastered wall must have been quite a challenge. Tony told me he painted murals in innumerable cantinas and chapels in Mexico, a chapel wall in Holland and murals in private homes. If you know of surviving one's, if you still enjoy your mural please send a picture and the story behind it... Tony did the murals at the university of Latin America in Mexico City, across the street of Diego Rivera's studio. It seems he got a write up in the national paper of those days as the loudmouthed gringo who offended the master. Diego Rivera had tried to give him a few 'pointers'.

Ted´s August

It was some time in the year 1968 in Amsterdam, the capital of The Netherlands, that I entered my hangout Café Theo Ruiter on the Rozengracht Nr. 160. For me this was indeed quite a common activity, not really daily, but close to that. The café (Dutch for pub) was full of people and the walls were covered by paintings. In fact Tony Mafia's paintings. Theo Ruiter was a famous innkeeper, who died in 1965 and his pub was frequented by many artists. After his death his son Karel took over. Many artists got the opportunity to exhibit their pieces of art. On that day it obviously was Tony's turn, though I feel that he was not a regular visitor of the pub. I was instantly impressed by his work. How colorful and pure it was! In the following days I came back and again (even more often than usual!) to admire the beautiful paintings and finally I decided to buy one. My budget was very limited indeed, so I could not afford one of the larger paintings.
But in fact my favorite was a smaller painting named Ted's August, it was placed just over the stairs leading to the upper part of the pub. When I told Karel about my interest he replied that Tony Mafia would be very happy, since he was in urgent need of money. So I paid the price of 200 Dutch Guilders (probably equalling about US$ 60) and Tony and I were happy about the deal.

And I still am. Ted's August has been a companion for almost 40 years now. I still love the colors, the mood, the atmosphere. The mother, the child and the cat have become good friends, or even members of the family. Can you imagine?

About the photos:

I photographed Café Theo Ruiter in 1968 or 1969.

Ted's August as it hangs in my living room. Click on it for a larger view!

Murals

One of the reasons Tony Mafia was a bit disenchanted with Chloride is that a large mural hab been painted over in the 'Tennessee Social Club and Saloon" in 1990. Many have spoken to me about the loss they still feel about this. Luckily a few other murals are still around. If you take a room at the Shep's Miners Inn (part of the Yesterdays Restaurant) then you can can ask for one of the two Tony Mafia rooms, mentioned in 'dessert currents' issue of June 2007 in an interview. Somewhere around 1988 he stayed a couple of days there when 'Linda' still had the place. He took his paint and left his mark. He liked Chloride because it was the West, a real old Wild West town. When I arrived here first in 1991 there were still many artist living in the small community: 307, they said, when you two are home. There were some other painters, potters and two writers beside myself. Tony despaired about the people taking classes and all doing the same old pot and the same quail... There were a lot of musicians around too but since he played according to his own inner rhythms, he seldom jammed with them.

Fishing

Chloride and the gasstation. Tony would love it and it made him despair. He felt good and at home and totally lonesome. He had friends, some loved his work, some loved his music, but he didn’t feel his work was understood. If it would get too much we would go fishing: in Willow Beach, Lake Mead, the South Cove, Echo Canyon (fly fishing) and Eagle Lake in Nevada where he caught some impressive brownies, Katherine’s Landing, along the Colorado in Laughlin behind the casino’s and at the end of Diamond Creek Road on the Hualapai Reservation, 22 miles of rough washboard road but with an immense beauty would surrounding him. He never caught anything there, not even had a nibble, but he would bullshit with a few of the guys there. Bij the way, Tony's picture is taken right there after fishing at the end of Diamond Creek Road. He would do sketches. One of them is in the Kingman Museum of History and Art. All that is in the painting Indian Sun shown and sold in December 1998 In Lineart Ghent, Belgium.

Diamond Creek Road♣

The intimate majesty of playing shade
on a curved wall
encompasses all

The wisdom of waiting for water
the strength of storms and stones
the beauty of belonging
and then
there is the shadow of the gods
and the fading of the light
when the windfull wings fold
and fall

Nudes

Of course Tony Mafia has done many nudes and erotic paintings and drawings. Many female figures wear red stockings, an age old symbol of ripe sexuality. In the period of his life that he sold his drawings in the café’s and brothels of the world, he painted many a “Lady of the way’s in repose’. These drawings and paintings are often tender and soft, sometimes explicitly sexual, but never vulgar or pornographic. In Nudes in the Gallery he combines paintings in paintings with nudes. In Antwerp in the late sixties, the seventies and eighties he would sell many of his drawings in the café's in the red light district. The girls would entice their Johns to buy them a watercolor or buy one for their wife. While living in Paris early sixties he would sell in the red light district near Les Halles. La Coupole, Café Flore, Saint Germain des Prés, he sold in all of these world famous places. In Café Méditerané James Mason bought a drawing for himself and one for Audrey Hepburn because her husband would not get her one...

Mexican and Spanish Paintings

The five O'clock Sun, when in the arena the bloods drips from the sword and the bull is slain...
Tony Mafia has often stayed for longer periods in Spain and Mexico. He worked for instance during six month in Casares, near Malaga in Spain. There he painted a whole exhibit in 1964, which sold out completely upon showing in Paris in Madame Besnard's Gallery. We met her in probably 1997, confirming all Tony's story about that period of his life, this was my impression of that meeting:

All is changed
nothing stays the same
but the street
on which the changing
walk until words
of past
hurt
for lack of a tomorrow

The fading star
of laughter lost
hears but the
murmur of memory
on rue St André des Arts
meeting Madame
Françoise Besnard

The small white village of Casares, with its bizarre soul surfaces now and then again as in “The lady with the goat”. Furthermore he knows bullfighting, Flamenco (he plays a mean guitar), the gypsies and the dance from the inside, the rendering of which are consequently never trivial, superficial or touristy. In these themes we once again find the freedom of expression that is given by “the costume”: the traje de luz of the bullfighters, knowing full well that the picador is important and that the toreador and matador wouldn’t stand a chance without him. He really lived the bullfights because he 'went' as a young man with I seem to remember Betty Ford, a lady matador and toured parts of Mexico with her... Guitars, peasants and multiple warm-blooded women are depicted, but also the thread of Death. To counter this, very often life is painted in full and robust color.


Of course Don Quixote and Dulcinea have to be there as well.

Religious paintings

In Tony Mafia's work there is a clear religious or rather spiritual quest. One will see Jesus Christ depicted as a human being. Tony painted many crucifixions, with the cross and the halo’s red with blood and human suffering. A pregnant Eve offers apples for sale in the church portal while the believers kneel in the background, praying to the Madonna. “The garden of Eden”, the painting in the Southern Baptist church in Chloride” Christ” is shown as a carpenter's son with grapes in his hand, always with the pain of a human being. “The Prophet and the book” is a painting in which the unicorn and the lusty satyr have their place next to the prophet sending embryos into the world. Indian Spirits, Angels, a god feeding the dancer, crucifixions, it are all expressions of a deeply doubting religious feeling. Hidden Crucifixion, is the painting above and the crucifixion is actually hidden in the lovers embrace. Note the difference in the paint and feel between the two paintings. The Hidden Crucifixion was painted in Hoboken and the Fool in Chloride.

This painting was done after meeting a young, recently divorced pastor and is called Jesus Christ and the Fool

Native American Paintings

Admire The Trail of Tears, all the icons are there : the freezing snow, the people suffering, but also hope and protection, confidence that the people survive. Note the Black Sun, a signature referring to his Indian Name.
Being Indian inspired an important part of Tony Mafia’s work. I use Indian since he didn’t like political correct speak. His father was Onondaga Cherokee. So he paints, hunting scenes, legends of different tribes and regions. He gets angry when in Canada a Six hundred years old sacred golden spruce if felled one night, just for fun. Thus he paints “The tree” and “The sentinel” in which a magical landscape is guarded by the sentinel raising from the rock. As mentioned before sometimes the Indian symbolism is mixed in with the self-portraits as these elements are mixed in his person. Except for subject matter, these paintings have nothing in common with “South Western Art” which leans dangerously close to kitsch: worn clichés and situations that can be recognized and understood in one look. In contrast, in Tony’s work it are the elements of form and color that touch you and only in further viewing the icons can be recognized and deciphered and the magic of colors is let loose in a “story”.


A Navajo with hawk at the moment of taking flight

Circus and harlequins

In Traveling Circus a trapeze artist is trying to find her balance, while HE is sitting quietly looking away, letting her hang out to dry... On the ladder doomingly dark near demonic figures climb up and up. An allegory of our world? The circus, clowns and harlequins are grateful subjects. They have strange and wonderful costumes and can express a range of emotions, from the intimate to the grotesque and the subject allows an explosion of exhilarating colors... often you'll find these people wandering in magical-mythical landscapes.



In Appled , where he combines image and words, he shows us how tenderness and happiness can be right under our nose and we still don't see it.

Tony's work

The Kiss, painted in Hoboken. Shown in Lineart 1998 Ghent.

Of this time, but no part of a any school or direction, makes Tony Mafia a lonely painter, lonely in his art. He paints the world as the world reveals itself to him, in a passionate, driven way, using those techniques that serve his purpose best in the expression of his feelings and insights. He plays the full pallet of colours, materials and styles that an experienced painter has at the tip of his fingers. What the French poet Queneau says about poetry is here applicable to painting: It is a means to help our deficient reason (raison déficiente) in learning the unveiled truth. Although Tony Mafia’s work stems from his singular experience, the result is universal. This universe is shown in a questioning search in a wide range of subjects. Each canvas and each drawing is a “finished piece of art” and in such constitutes a temporary but certain answer. In his paintings he shuns the too slick, too finished and too easy and resolutely turns too an effect that seems primitive without being naive however. Just as the way Lost Canyon strikes us:


The work of this painter can be more or less dealt with in following broad categories of subjects: Painting, Circus and Harlequins, Paintings influenced by his Native American heritage (Honandaga Cherokee), Religious, Spanish/Mexican themes, Nudes, Political works, abstracts. This is by no mean exhaustive for the work Tony Mafia paints. A separate post will be written about the landscapes and their function in this painter’s work.

Tony Mafia's life

Robert Lee Alderson was born on August 4th 1931, second son to a very pretty lady and a Cherokee. The hard times he was born in, filed his soul with hunger. When he was 8 years old his father, who could no longer deal with the blatant racism he was subjected to, drank acid and died a horrible self-inflicted death. The 4 children where placed in an Indian orphanage: Laurence Hall for Boys in Chicago for Tony and his older brother. There Father Bennet saw that he was a special child and had him tested. It turned out he had an uncanny sense of visual balance. As a result he got a grant to the Chicago Art Institute where he followed the drawing classes with the grown ups. Also a second year till the priest discovered that the students had progressed to do nude studies and he deemed this unfit for a small boy of 9.


At the age of 14 he ran away from the orphanage and hitchhiked, worked his way to San Francisco where his mother was then married to Mario Mafai. This Sicilian ‘ran the money for the pony’s’ to Las Vegas. So the name got turned into Mario Mafia. Tony wanting to get out of the constraints and red neck mentality and realities of all that was connected to his birthname chose to be Tony Mafia. His stepfather's Italian friends took to Tony and taught him to make a mean Bolognese sauce. At the age of 16 he asked a ‘hooker’ to pose as his mother and to give him permission to become an able bodied seaman for the merchant marine. He definitely didn’t want to become a cowboy or work in the bottle factory he worked in anyway a bit later. He kind of finished high school while being a sailor and missed a boat in 1947 in Antwerp Belgium. It took him six month to find a ship out. He always said: there I learned that air has light and color. He tried to get into the Academy but was not accepted. That doesn’t mean a thing since Van Gogh hadn’t been accepted either… He kept coming back to Antwerp where we met in 1968.
He married young, had a daughter, got divorced, married again and had another daughter. On a drunken night a group of friends all got married in Mexico and found out the wedding counted, so after 5 weeks the third marriage was canceled. I met this lady in 2004 and told her, she was the only one of his ex-wives he had never said a bad word about… Somewhere in between the second and third marriage he thought he had joined the Foreign Legion, but it turned out the Air force just had new uniforms and he only found out in boot camp where he actually was. He was stationed in Germany, where after some tribulations they let him restore the old churches that had been damaged during the war. Therefore he needed to learn the old techniques. He always spoke with respect of the German schools where they ‘didn’t mess with your head, but just showed you what you could do’. He has a sculpting of Roy Rodger in the Pentagon and among others did a portrait in Korea of General Mc Arthur. During his leave he would always go to Paris where later he lived ‘on the fourth floor in a chambre the bonne’ after having stayed in Hotel Belgique for a while. He had a good period there meeting a lot of people like Jacques Brel and some of the Hollywood stars. He also spent 6 month in Casares in Spain, painting for an exhibition in the Gallerie Françoise Besnard in Paris and selling out. Tony never could or would give exact indications of years. He must have been back in California during that period too. Anyway in the early sixties he was put in prison in Denmark for selling a drawing without a license and having insufficient funds: Six month of solitary confinement. They let him sell his good old banjo to the guard to pay the fine… He went straight to Paris where he met a Danish lady whom he later married. He had a period of hard work and sometimes lots of money, sometimes spending it all in one night. He was a typical rebel with tons of charisma so that the others would project their longing into his life. Men saw him as what they wanted to be and women wanted to be with him to become an Indian, or an artist, or more vital or more depressed… In his fourth marriage to Anne Mors he had two children, still living in Los Angeles. Early seventies they split up.
Because of his health situation (a bad heart) he had to cancel all contracts with the galleries. The Veterans Administration would only take care of him if he had no income. The decision did keep him alive but ruined is artistic career. After that he only did smaller shows in Europe for fear of being found out by the VA.
He played music, acted a bit, even was in a musical as a chorus boy…
Many have collected his work. I think the most honest assessment is that ‘he had a cult status in an inner circle’. He also had quiet a temper, so made enemies in a second and friends in half a second.
We met first in Antwerp while he was playing folk and folk rock and flamenco. In August 1968 I saw the first drawings and walked home with a few. Only in 1991 Tony and I became an item and got married. He did do a few bigger good shows and worked very hard and intensely during these last years of his life.
I haven’t mentioned his Far East experiences, but they are gruesome. He arrived in Shanghai, when Shanghai fell and saw how 10.000 people were executed in the streets. He carried the fear of death deep within himself.
Over the years he also wrote strange poetic parables and songs. Some of those I collected and translated in ‘My book, my life’.
Of course, he lived regularly in Las Vegas: as a young man when his mother was a dancer there and regularly in the seventies and eighties when he had a gallery for a while. He knew some of the celebrities coming though Vegas.
Tony’s life was the stuff of myths and I try not to proclaim the ultimate truth but to let everybody hang on to their own version of Tony Mafia…

The painter, the man

On this blog you'll find text about and by Tony Mafia, the painter, the musician and regularly his paintings. He always felt his work was better than he himself was and it may lighten our heart looking at his legacy. Tony Mafia was born on August 4 in 1931 and died on the 10th of May 1999. His work though is alive. His painting career started at the young age of eight when he received a scholarship for the Chicago Art Institute where he learned to draw in the classes for grown ups. When at age nine the lessons included drawing after a model and some of them nude, the priests of Lawrence Hall, Indian Home for Boys in Chicago, didn't particularly like that... He roamed the world spending the last eight years of his life between his studio in Hoboken, Belgium and Chloride in the desert of Arizona.
The painting is 'Shipwreck' painted late autumn 1998 in Hoboken, shown in Lineart in Ghent, Belgium in December 1998.