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MATI
KLARWEIN
IS DREAMING LIGHT
by
Ricardo Cortés
I’m going to turn into a dream
And then you’ll be in real trouble
On the morning of March 7th, 2002,
Matí Klarwein passed away in his
sleep, from his home in Deia,
on the island of Mallorca, Spain.
“I painted psychedelically before I
took psychedelics,” he once said.
I was in love with his craftsmanship.
Matí became a mentor in my head as
soon as I first saw his work.
He painted impossibly, beyond what
I’d ever imagined one could do in an
image —blending styles of the Flemish
masters, spectacular Islamic patterns,
Indian tantric arts, cartoons, Hebrew,
and talismans, to start. He changed
his name to Abdul Matí because he
said Jews should take an Arab name,
and vice versa. He painted Santana’s
Abraxas and Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew
albums, along with work for Buddy
Miles, Jerry Garcia, and The Last Poets:
surreal, swirling grasses, fire skies, dots,
terraces, panoramic orgies, meteors, and
beautiful bodies with stars falling from
their hair.
I wrote to him once, sent him some work. He replied he liked it
“a lot, except for the big Joni Mitchel face with the guitar and a
stiff upper lip and a mean look. Putting famous people into your
work will not improve your art…paint the environment around
you first before you branch out into ‘Cosmic’ statements…”
It’s not even Joni Mitchel, but it is a big Joni Mitchel
face with a stiff lip and a mean look. And I was stoked.
Under the date, February 2001, he signed: “NO RUSH!”
Matí was a friend of the family of a friend. I’d
always hoped to go to Spain to visit him, to see
where he lived and worked, and maybe rub the
buddha’s belly.
On September 6th, 2001 I flew to Barcelona.
For days I kept putting off contacting him,
until I thought I was ready…on the 11th.
That morning, my call was postponed.
But two weeks later I called Matí from a
payphone outside the Dalí museum in Figueres.
And with a bag of wild rice I had picked up
from our mutual fam in New York, I was
invited to his home to deliver it.
A pilgrimage to my Master. A cliché, just like
Matí had done before me, to his kooky friend
Salvador Dalí. Matí said the first time he
approached the artist, he arrived outside his
home and just kind of looked at the door. He
had a fantasy, like everyone before him, that
El Maestro would see the student’s work and
declare him an heir apparent. But Matí never
got the guts to knock, and left.
He later met Dalí, when living in New York,
doing work for Miles, Hendrix (“so shy..”),
and Timothy Leary, among others. Matí
described Salvador to me as very selfish, yet
generous, supersexual, and assexual. He said
he’d seen Dalí masturbate over a cantaloupe,
with a limp penis, ejaculating while crying,
“Oh Divine Sperm!”
Matí was born in Germany in 1932 and grew up in Palestine
after his parents fled the Nazis. Maybe living through that
and further world experience gave him a jaded feel on the
U.S. events from which I was reeling. His response to my
paranoia supreme and apocalyptic musing was something
like a weary nod.
As he wrote in his 1976 book, God Jokes:
“The end of the world is very near. So take your time.”
When I visited him, he lived a ten minute hike from the
main road, up a winding sand path with twisted olive trees
and a white mare who ate apples from the hands of my friend
Jesse and myself. Matí joked that his daily walk helped his
lungs handle a joint every once in a while. His house was
rented from a writer, his battered Mercedes was a barter for
a painting. And the view from it all was over the goat-treaded
hills looking out to the ocean.
Inside he had a collection of African and Flamenco
Cds and a humble art collection. There was a simple
thrift store portrait of a Spanish gentleman that
Matí was in awe of, along with a few Ethiopian prints
in cheap frames.
One windowsill was set up as a collectibles and
deities shrine, completely run over with cobwebs.
“I let the spiders build their webs there, that way
they stay out of everything else,” he said.
There was also a fingerpainted Picasso hanging offkilter next to a drawing signed “Salvador.” I held
my breath, but it wasn’t the D; it was Matí’s son,
fulfilling a tradition of naming a son the name of
your favorite painter.
I think the funniest thing Matí said that day, letting us look
through the paintings he had propped against the wall of his
living room, was that he used to draw beautiful naked women,
and now he drew rocks.
“I have noticed that I am lately becoming what in my earlier and silly
years I would have qualified as rather silly.”
He didn’t know where much of his work was. “Crucifixion”
was there. Awesome, massive, interracial intersexual buggery.
Matí said it even still had recently shut down a Madrid gallery.
“Dakar Angel” was there. Plus a new one he was working on,
one of his “improved paintings” (thrift store paintings that
he took into his studio and…“improved”) with an alarm clock
sticking out of the canvas.
Pictures of his children and grandchildren on his fridge,
daily drives to town, painting in the afternoon. He received
a pilgrim once in a while too (there were two skateboards
left for his sons by two American pros who had come by
months before. Matí let Jesse and I skate them down the
snaky highway to Deia central).
It was a magical, restorative respite from the chaos I thought about back home in NY.
“Do you seriously believe that by being serious you’ll live forever?”
Photo: Madrid, Spain September 2001
Thank you for your hospitality, Abdul Matí Klarwein.
About the author:
Ricardo Cortés is an author & illustrator of books,
including Go the Fuck to Sleep, I Don’t Want to Blow You Up!,
It’s Just a Plant, and The Secret History of Coffee, Coca & Cola.
I’ve hardly begun to touch the oeuvre of Matí here.
For more about him, I’d suggest to start with:
www.MatiKlarweinArt.com
Rmcortes.com