New York - August 5th, 1997
From Objet, August 1997 Issue
By Brent Metierra
To anyone interested in paint, Christoph Ossirian was a singular figure: at times frustrating, infuriating, exasperating, endearing, brilliant, petulant, and intriguing. The reams that have been written about his work and his life- such as is known- are more than complete. Indeed, if one is to learn about the man, his work should be all that is necessary. Pollock himself said that “Every good artist paints what he is.”
No, I did not commit an inadvertent gaucherie in invoking the allusions between Pollock and Ossirian. Both were revolutionary, both died in car accidents (if such a thing as an accident exists for drunks) alone. This is the extent of the similarities between the two men. Pollack was, in most accounts, an unreasonable, cranky, misogynistic old man, even when he was young. The drink made him even more bitter and resentful. If these characteristics contributed to his particular brand of genius, they were unique to his perversity. Ossirian suffered none of these faults. I never met him. I have the interviews, press, and apocryphal stories that spring up around public figures, especially notorious ones, but a clear picture can be constructed from the available data and hearsay.
By all accounts, Ossirian was charming, witty, and otherworldly. It wasn’t that he connected with another reality, but more like he lived in one, and returned often with pictures of what he experienced there.
His most famous work, the enormous House of Many Hearts, is a perennial favorite of the MOMA, drawing crowds by the thousands daily. The two dozen lesser canvases that surround it draw no less attention for their bold color and unusually brash style, but it is House of Many Hearts that captures the imagination with the ghost-like apparitions captured within seemingly-moving whorls and swoops of paint. One can (as I have) stare into the canvas for hours and never fail to discern new and captivating shapes and meanings. In Ossirian’s inexplicably generous donation to the MOMA one may lose and find one’s self, and if you look with the right kind of eyes you may catch a glimpse of Ossirian himself in the pigments.
Ossirian never failed to fascinate, of course, but it is the two relationships he spent the most time cultivating which define the man in full. The first was with contemporary and bitter rival Hans Toefler, the Munich-born artist whose work so captivated the French in the 70s and again in the 90s. Their rivalry has become the stuff of legend or the movies: each striving to outdo the other, each striving to out-quote the other. Using the media as their middle-child go-between, Ossirian and Toefler carried out a forty-year assassination of one another’s work, character, and lives. Scarcely a day would pass after Toefler’s embittered quip to a reporter regarding Ossirian that Ossirian would offer a rebuttal and often a painting as well. Toefler’s work has never lacked for context, meaning, and sometimes ponderous portentousness, but his output, while marvelous, could never match Ossirian’s possessed-by-devils-and-angels-both unrelenting production. While Toefler often managed to take the high ground with his clever insults and disparagements, it was with his responses on canvas that Ossirian showed the world that Hans Toefler would always be the second-best in their relationship.
But to balance every rivalry there must also be a friendship, a partnership, a source of hope and joy. To that end, the third pillar of Ossirian’s world would be Dr. Carolyn Delgado.
Gallery owner, art collector, CEO, fashionista, and unrelenting partner to the often incomprehensible Ossirian, Carolyn Delgado has become something of an icon herself, not because of Ossirian and his work, but because of her unique place in history beside the man himself. Manager, friend, lover, and advocate, Carolyn Delgado was singular in Ossirian’s world for any number of reasons, but the most important one is the nickname, pet name, or perhaps true name by which he called her: Muse.
If in fact Delgado were Ossirian’s muse in a literal sense, she was by far the hardest-working muse ever to urge an artist forward. In the forty active years of Ossirian’s career he gave the world a staggering number of paintings, second only to Pablo Picasso’s output (although unlike Picasso, Ossirian worked exclusively in paint, never sketched). This is made more impressive by the fact that Picasso produced for thirty more years than Ossirian.
If Delgado was Ossirian’s muse, she was also his manager. From the beginning of his career in Brazil Delgado managed his money, at first just his personal accounts, but ultimately the entirety of Muse, Inc, which oversees curation of the vast majority of his collection as well as administers the donations, scholarships, and serious study of artistic learning to students and universities across the globe.
Carolyn Delgado then, may have been the most important person in Ossirian’s life. What would one learn if she had been of a mind to sit and talk about her client, friend, and lover?
Sadly, the opportunity is now past. Carolyn Delgado died in a car crash in São Paulo, Brazil in May of this year, silencing forever this unique woman. Her loss is a loss to myself, those who knew her, and the world.
In fact I had the great fortune of meeting her, finding her outside Bellini’s Uptown in New York City, and shared a quiet lunch with her. Although she feigned ignorance, she knew who I was and what I was after, and still had the grace to allow me to join her and we shared a long conversation, some of the details of which I had planned to relate. Shortly after Carolyn Delgado’s death (bitterly ironic, a car accident on a mountain road at night) I took a moment to reflect on the experience of meeting her and spending time talking about life, love, and art, and I have decided that the details of my encounter were all personal, even the trivial ones.
In the short time I knew Carolyn Delgado I found her to be charming, graceful, and elegant of manner and person. She was singular. Not defined by her relationship to Ossirian, or her acquaintance with Hans Toefler, but a unique person in her own legitimate right. Dr. Carolyn Delgado will be missed. I miss her now.