Life is paradise. The portraits of Francesco Clemente. Essay and interview by Vincent Katz.

Ein gutes und sauberes Exemplar. - I think of Francesco Clemente as a poet of inner space. His images seem to take place inside a room, inside a body, inside a mind. This is so despite the proliferation of sexual and other orifices and the flow of matter- sometimes organic, sometimes inorganic-through and between the bodies. His classic style has more to do with his own sensations and thoughts than with depiction of the outside world. The omnipresence of Clemente's own visage and body in his corpus strengthens this epistemological position. That is why the portraits are so startling. Here, for the first time, we are face to face with a wide sweep of people who make up the artist's world-the famous and the unknown, the beautiful and the plain, poets, artists, musicians, collectors, and those who fascinate not by what they do but by who they are, or perhaps it would be better to say, how they are. Clemente has done portraits since early in his career, but they have rarely been exhibited. Even if we discount the ubiquitous self-portraits-saying they are not so much portraits as permutations of a persona engaged in a range of acts, as metaphors for all of humanity-the early fresco portraits of Massimo Audiello, Bruno Bischofberger, Sandro Chia, Diego Cortez, Edit De Ak, Mario Diacono, Fab 5 Freddy (Fred Brathwaite), Keith Haring, Taylor Mead, David Salle, and Julian Schnabel attest to an abiding interest in depicting people. The portraits comprise several bodies of work: 18 large frescoes done in 1980-81; 50 watercolors from 1982-87; 30 oil paintings on wood panels done in 1985; 18 pastels of women from 1995-96; 12 pastels of actors from the film Great Expectations, 1996 (for which Clemente also created the artwork featured in the film); eight pastels and five paintings of poets done in 1994-97; and Devi, a series in progress of horizontal oil paintings on canvas of women. In addition to these discrete formal series, there are portraits of friends and family, including the artist's wife, Alba, and their children Chiara, Nina, Andrea, and Pietro. Portraiture plays a prominent role within the artist's most recent efforts, reflecting a significant shift in emphasis. ISBN 9781576870532