By DAN KEETON

In this society, being both an artist and a
} socialist is a bit irrational.
} That’s what Randy Caravaggio thinks.
} The Vancouver Island sculptor believes that
) art is being kept from the people who would
| best benefit by it.
“To make the work of art isn’t that much
| ofa problem. But when it comes to selling it,
| that’s where you see the real injustice.”
| “You've got to get into some sort of
| gallery or get an agent. Your stuff could be
‘the best in the world, but (selling your art)
depends on your name, among other
'} things,” he says.

This isn’t bitterness from some unrecog-
nized artist. Caravaggio’s name has become
known in some circles. The Italian-born
artist who makes his home in Cobble Hill
has had successful displays in Vancouver
— including B.C. Place — and Victoria.
His works have sold in the United States
and Europe, as well as Canada.

Caravaggio has scored some commercial
success in a mileau of privately owned and
run galleries, private and corporate patron-
age, and where achieving renown depends
on what one has sold. Yet it is a system he

dislikes.

backed dictatorship in the Central Ameri-
can country).”

Caravaggio’s own work reflects, as he
himself puts it, movement over details such
as muscle relief. His Screaming Head shows
a larger than life human head — or the idea
of a human head — virtually in motion
with its features twisted into a silent roar.

Caravaggio says the source of the idea
was himself. He was at a demonstration in
Nanaimo against the then campaigning
Prime Minister Brian Mulroney when he
found himself literally screaming in outrage.
(A large campaign rally there was limited to
the Tory faithful, and three members of a
local peace organization were manhandled
by police and security when they attempted
to attend.)

Caravaggio’s own background made
him an unlikely candidate for the arts
world, at least by contemporary standards.
The son of rural farm labourers, he moved
with his family in 1967 from their village,
Rocca San Giovanni near the Adriatic Sea,
to Guelph, Ont., in 1967.

His parents were basically illiterate, but
they understood the class system well
enqugh, Caravaggio notes.

“In Italy in those days, it was a feudal
society under the control of the landlords. It

_ Art is really the only recording machine
we. have.of the human. experience. It’s a

signature of time.

There are two things wrong with that
system, Caravaggio says: it keeps deserving
artists toiling in obscurity and it keeps art
from the public. =

Asif in ironic recognition of that fact, his
own showplace is named the Unknown
"Gallery. It resides in the basement of his
home located behind the workshop on the
Trans-Canada Highway about 18 kilome-
tres south of Duncan.

The Unknown Gallery contains several
of Caravaggio’s works, including a two-
metre-tall figure called The Dancer, carved
from red cedar, and The Screaming Head,
carved from a brilliant white stone. While
the materials vary, most of the sculptures
have a common feature: they are abstrac-
tions of an idea rather than strictly realistic
reproductions. They are definitely not of the
socialist realism school of art.

So how do people unschooled in art
appreciation get the idea?

“Abstract art has been with us from 70-
80 years now. Most people now understand
what it’s all about,” Caravaggio explains.

“Take (South Africa’s Prime Minister
P.W.) Botha or (Chilean dictator Augusto)
Pinochet. They look real, but they’re not
saying what’s really on their minds. That’s
abstract.

“Things today are not the same as they'll
be tomorrow. And you'll look at something
differently.”

Research plays its part, too. Caravaggio
relates how he initially failed to appreciate
the meaning behind a painting by a Gua-
temalan artist that depicted a herd of cows
covered with red dots.

“Then I read about how Mcdonald’s
takes up valuable land in Guatemala that
could be used by peasants, to raise cattle for
its hamburgers. So the red dots represent
death, blood or bullets (symbolic of the
military force that maintains the U‘S.

was not like Canada, where things are more
hidden. Here, you see the bank, but not the
boss. Over there you see the boss every
week. Things tend to be more black and
white.

“That’s why I think the Communist
Party there grew so strong. The fightback
there transformed Italy.

“My father didn’t have time to sit and
debate ideas, but he was always progressive.
And I’ve always been a socialist.”

As for the inclination to sculpt, Caravag-
gio figures that goes back to his younger
days. When his father needed a tool for
some task, he would often fashion one out
of wood, and in doing so, passed the skill to
his son.

The younger Caravaggio returned to
Italy in 1975, where he resided in a com-
mune in Tofillo, about 180 kilometres from
his birthplace. Its residents were mainly
working class youth, and it was there that he
discovered his inclination for sculpting.

Back in Canada in two years later, Cara-
vaggio found work on a farm on Dewdney
Island near Mission. There he met other
artists, and soon left his job to take up
sculpting full time.

He worked with a variety of materials,
including clay and wood. The latter was
used in many of his creations, but these days
Caravaggio works more in stone.

His first efforts on the commune in Italy
were primitive and rough, Caravaggio says.
But they found an appreciative audience in
the local people.

“In Italy, art is more respected. The
common folks there didn’t know much,
perhaps, but they respected (art). That was
worth more to me than money can buy.”

Philosophically, Caravaggio sees art as
growing out of the movements of the day.
The Renaissance was a great period for
creativity because the art reflected the grow-

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ing political, economic and social upheavals
that accompanied the dying days of feudal-
ism, he reasons. Likewise, Surrealists and
Dadaists reflected the changes of the early
20th century.

Today, he sees the art world producing
“almost scams,” in which various art
movements reflect style without philo-
sophy. That, he says, is a product of the
marketing aspect of art.

“Artists are not left in peace so that they
can experiment. They are forced to get into
the marketing of it.” And whatever is
fashionable sells.

Caravaggio thinks governments can doa
lot more for the art world by financing it.
For example, extra funding would allow
communities to set up public galleries to
display works by local artists.

“There are a lot of people around with a
lot of good ideas, but no money to put them
into practice. It’s a lost jewel.”

Yet art is a entity with permanent value,
observes Caravaggio. “It’s really the only
recording machine we have of the human
experience, It can hopefully make the world
a better place to live in. Art, to me, is a
signature of time.

“Art has a social need — it elevates
people, makes people grow.”

Like social services, art can fall victim to
the times. So it with today’s world, where
the arms race eats up funds that could go to
improving people’s lives, Caravaggio notes.
In South Africa, black people living in pov-
erty and engaged in the struggle against
apartheid have little time for creativity.
Even in earlier times, artists like Leonardo
Da Vinci suffered. He was prevented from
casting the world’s largest horse statue
because the government wanted the bronze
for cannons.

Caravaggio thinks that, despite the
“conditioning” artists have that they must
succeed alone, there are ways of organizing
the arts community.

He notes that during Picasso’s time,
artists in Europe maintained guilds which
owned the galleries to display the members’
creations. And with the growth of coalitions
around the world, “I think we’re coming
close to that.”

“A new era, I think, is coming. But it’s
gcing to require a lot of work.”

Dancer (r), artist Randy Caravaggio’s
carving in red cedar. Below, artist with
several works, including Screaming

Head in foreground.

Caravaggio: bringing art
back to the people |

Pacific Tribune, May 1, 1989 « 27