Hubbard's Portrait
Rod Keller
Associated Newspapers
10 July 2000
by Peter Culshaw
The locals call the valley where Anthony Christian lives Mad Valley. It
has spectacular vistas and is close to one of the hill-stations in
southern India, five hours from the nearest small airport. It's also home
to a curious collection of eccentrics - a litigious Italian aristocrat who
is the guru of an offshoot of the famous ashram at Auroville, a female
jockey who has won most of the biggest races in India, and a visionary
ex-hippie who is developing a new form of bio-dynamic agriculture. Then
there's Anthony Christian himself - extraordinary artist and
self-proclaimed genius, who is this week having his first London
exhibition for 28 years.
Back in the Seventies he was a celebrated portrait painter and something
of a Brit Art star, with glowing writeups in Vogue. Then he dropped off
the map, going first to Bali and then India, where he became a virtual
recluse with his art materials and a succession of wives for company. (His
last wife left him last year when he disappeared unexpectedly for four
months to draw trees.)
Mad Valley is known for its lush profusion of strange flora and fauna,
such as the kurinji, a flower which blossoms only every 12 years (the next
time is 2004), rare bats, scorpions and the odd panther. You have to avoid
running over monkeys on the way to Anthony Christian's estate, which he
shares with his current paramour, Marianne ("finally, I have found my soul
mate"), who is also a fine artist. When I meet him he is deep in
contemplation of a bougainvillea. "The way the colours variegate is
amazing. Most people don't really see things, they are too lazy to look,
don't you find?" Before I can answer he launches into a monologue, saying
that he is a split personality. He tells me he has six personalities and
runs through them, with appropriate voices, including Jacques, a
Frenchman, a laid-back American and an amazingly well-informed art
historian.
"This is how I know, without a trace of ego, entirely objectively, that I
am one of the greatest artists alive," he says. He also tells me that when
he paints he is often possessed by the spirit of one of the great Old
Masters, acting as a "channel" for them.
You might suppose that here is a sad individual with delusions of
grandeur. But sad he isn't. There's humour in his painting and he laughs a
lot and it's difficult to figure out how serious he is. Yet,
simultaneously, he is utterly dedicated to his work. He has numerous
champions, such as the Times art critic John Russell Taylor, who says
Christian "draws like an angel". No one has ever dared to deny he is a
master draughtsman. I've certainly never come across anyone who could
match him for, say, the incredible detail and folds of the drapes he
paints in his version of Vermeer's artist's studio. He isn't part of any
artistic current, and Russell Taylor points out that the strangeness of
his work springs from his mixture of Renaissance techniques and a
post-modern sensibility.
A child prodigy, he was making copies of Old Masters at the age of 10.
Usually, you have to be 18 to be allowed to use this method of learning in
the National Gallery, but the rules were bent for him. By the late Fifties
he was on the front pages and being hailed a genius. The story the papers
jumped on was that he was offered #10,000 for a 6ft by 4ft copy of
Wouwerman's Cavalry Battle.
By his late teens, he realised he could use his amazing technical facility
to make a living as a portrait painter and was a figure in both hip and
aristocratic circles, painting everyone from Julie Christie and Gore Vidal
to Terence Stamp and Lord Mountbatten. But portraits and a glitzy social
scene weren't enough for him, and in the Seventies he disappeared to Bali,
and obscurity, selling the odd painting to survive.
He told me one incident among many that had put him off portraits was when
the Scientology founder L Ron Hubbard asked him to "paint me in a way that
people can worship me". He's now decided to end his self-imposed exile,
and said I was the first journalist who had ever been to his south Indian
retreat. Apart from anything else, he wants to build a fantastic tower on
his property. And to fund that he has to stick his head above the parapet.
He still does versions of the Old Masters, but adds his own twists - Van
Eyck's Arnolfini's Marriage now has little additions, such as an erotic
scene in the mirror. Indeed he has plans to do 21 Old Masters in a more
erotic style. Although pitched by his agent as a classicist, he's really a
surrealist (some of his paintings are genuinely outrageous - such as a
painting of a lion pleasuring a ballerina). He showed me his "play-room" -
a four-poster bed, mirrored ceiling and walls covered with erotic
drawings. "All those pictures I studied at the National Gallery," he said.
"There's really too much violence and torture in them. I'm going to
transform them, update them into something much sexier." Anthony
Christian's collision of the Renaissance, Surrealism and the cyber-age
will be fascinating to watch.
Anthony Christian's exhibition is at The Chapel Gallery, 459a Fulham Road,
Chelsea SW10 9UZ, until 28 July, by appointment only. Tel: 020 7349 9911.
Ed
barb
>
> Great story, thanks for finding it and posting.
Yes. I wonder, did he paint El Phatard, do you think? Or was he repulsed
by Hubbard's hubristic request?
--
barb
"Every week, every month, every year, every decade and now
every century, Scientology does wierd and stupid things
to damage its own reputation."
-Steve Zadarnowski
http://www.xenu.net
http://www.xenutv.com (see live Scientologists in their natural state!)
NTh...@pod.com
wrotg:
I'm just impressed with any artist who could expand L. Ron Hubbard
into two dimensions.
NTH
StveJ
>From: barb bw...@pacbell.net
>Date: Mar 11 juil 2000 9:09 AM
>Message-id: <396B46C6...@pacbell.net>
>
>Ed wrote:
>>
>> Great story, thanks for finding it and posting.
>
>Yes. I wonder, did he paint El Phatard, do you think? Or was he repulsed
>by Hubbard's hubristic request?
Doesn't take much to get your bigot cells excited, eh?
Some story of a guy who has had a story rolling in his head for decades. Does
the word embellish mean anything to you?
Poor barb. Good luck with the next twist of your life.
Steve
Dave Bird
Hash: SHA1
In art<20000712034048...@ng-mb1.aol.com>, StoodGe writes:
>>Subject: Re: Hubbard's Portrait
>>From: barb bw...@pacbell.net
>>Date: Mar 11 juil 2000 9:09 AM
>>Message-id: <396B46C6...@pacbell.net>
>>
>>Ed wrote:
>>>
>>> Great story, thanks for finding it and posting.
>>
>>Yes. I wonder, did he paint El Phatard, do you think? Or was he repulsed
>>by Hubbard's hubristic request?
>
>Doesn't take much to get your bigot
did I hear a fwog cwoaking ?????
- --
poor littul fwogs: Biggott! Biggott! Biggott! biggott BIGOTT ribit
biggit \bigit \ / boggit / biggott/ / bip
ِِِ ِِضِ ِِضضِِِِضِِ ِِ ِ ِضِِ ِِضضِ ضِِِ ِِ ِ ِضِِ ِِِ ِِ ِِضضضِِ ِِِ ضِ
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