My Life in Focus by Gianni Bozzacchi Joey Tayler & Joey Tayler

Author:Gianni Bozzacchi,Joey Tayler & Joey Tayler [Gianni Bozzacchi,Joey Tayler & Tayler, Joey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2017-02-19T00:00:00+00:00

I treasure this sketch, a personal gift from the great Italian artist Renato Guttuso. He told me it was inspired by one of my photos, which he’d clipped from a magazine.

Me and Renato Guttuso, 1969. The photo was taken by my assistant at the time, Elizabeth’s son Michael Wilding.

For a long time, Guttuso’s extreme left-wing views kept him from getting the recognition he deserved. He’s been reappraised in recent years, and I believe many now rank him alongside Modigliani as one of Italy’s—and the world’s—leading contemporary artists.

Guttuso was a much easier subject to work with than Picasso, at least for me. For one thing, there was no language barrier between us. I felt much more at ease with him. And he let me do whatever I wanted. Picasso pretended not to care how he was photographed, but every now and then I caught him striking a pose. Guttuso, on the other hand, truly didn’t care. He just got down to work and left me to mine. The suffering you could see in the lines in his face made him a particularly interesting subject. You could read in them all the battles he’d fought to become who he was. Picasso’s face didn’t display suffering. I believe this says a lot about the two men, and the two artists. And, as far as I’m concerned, I’ve always identified more closely with fighters.

A couple weeks later, I attended Ron Berkeley and Vicky Tiel’s wedding. Ron did Elizabeth’s makeup on a lot of her movies, so she and Richard attended too. I hadn’t seen Elizabeth in a while, so we were chatting about what I’d been up to, and I told her about my experiences with Picasso and Guttuso, how meeting such great artists had inspired me but also made me feel insecure about my work. Elizabeth was very surprised when I told her how much trouble I’d had breaking the ice with Picasso.

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