WOW just woke up from a doozy of a dream and had to blog about it immediately. I dreamt I was invited to an amazing, super-modern apartment for a cocktail party (or a “pre-game”, as it were, as we were instructed along with the invitation that we’d be going clubbing afterwards). The host was the wonderful Tiziana Casali, who is the owner of a modeling agency I worked for in Milan, ages ago… and old Italian lady, by appearances she is quite dowdy but underneath she is tough as nails.
Entering Tiziana’s apartment there was a sense of going to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, and we were invited as if we were the creatives from Atlas Shrugged. Tiziana was our Willy Wonka/John Galt in the shape of an Italian grandmother. She had constructed around her apartment kind of an installation art exhibition of 80′s visuals. We, the guests, were given paper and mechanical pencils and had to go around the room, look at the art, and write the artist, or movie, or book’s name that the installation art represented.
There were drinks, and fashion, and it was all in good fun but we took our task seriously and a slightly competitive feel overtook the room. There were Herb Ritts photos, Keith Haring sculptures, Gaultier clothes, a Warhol wig, Fornasetti plates (never realized I considered Fornasetti to be 80′s, but apparently I do). There was a compilation of styling accessories that styling genius Ray Petri had used in his editorials for THE FACE and ARENA magazines.
The most compelling installation was a diorama that Tiziana had created. It was a shoe box on its side, decorated as if it were the drug dealer Julian’s bedroom from Less Than Zero, and inside were two dolls fucking in the missionary position, at the same angle as in the scene where Stacey loses her virginity in the dugout from Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Brilliant! None of the guests guessed correctly, it wasn’t until we started brainstorm and free-associating together that we came up with it, with Tiziana egging us on with glee.
There was one spot on my answer sheet I couldn’t get filled, and I started to kind of panic. It was a painting:
and the answer was on the tip of my tongue, but for some reason it wasn’t coming. Then someone whispered “Schnabel”, and then I started to write Schnabel, but my mechanical pencil ran out of lead. Then I woke up. The painting was by Jean Michel Basquiat who I’m not all that familiar with, and someone in the dream was whispering Schnabel, because Julian Schnabel had directed a movie about the painter. So, kind of a disappointing ending, but overall, an EPIC dream.
Dugout pic via T_Hoffarth’s Flickr
Fornasetti is TOTALLY 80s