La Casa Dipinta

A friend of mine and I have an informal arrangement where she helps me with my Italian and I help her with her (already excellent) English. She is a tour guide, and a major side benefit of this arrangement is that sometimes she asks me to go with her on an informal tour to some of the sites she visits with her clients...meaning that I get a private guided tour!

Most recently, Elisa and I went to La Casa Dipinta. It is the vacation home of Brian O'Doherty, who for many years painted under the name Patrick Ireland. As Elisa explained it to me, Mr. O'Doherty trained as a physician in Ireland because of family pressures, then moved to New York to specialize in oncology. He became rather well known as an oncologist in the 1950s, but upon meeting his (future) wife, an artist of some flavor (art director? I don't remember), decided to give up medicine to pursue his true love: modern art.

Brian O'Doherty has had a notable career in many arenas: artist in his own right, art critic, novelist, and speaker. He first visited Todi with his wife at the instigation of a mutual friend, the photographer George Tatge. Mr. Tatge still has a vacation home in Todi, although he is currently living in Florence. Like us, Mr. O'Doherty was smitten with Todi, and he and his wife decided to purchase a home here which he would use as a canvas for his newest discovery: the Celtic written alphabet.

La Casa Dipinta is predicated on several concepts from modern art, as well as the artist's own philosophies. Just as he feels the Celtic written alphabet is a powerful distillation of language, he feels that the human experience can be distilled into the three words "one, here, now"...we are each one, and together we form one group, etc. We can only be "here" and in the present ("now"). It's a bit abstruse for me, to tell you the truth, but hey...to each his own.

Anyway, using the Celtic tree alphabet -- which (as the artist shows it, unlike in wikipedia, where it is rotated 90°) consists of a series of vertical line segments above, below, or crossing a horizontal line -- the artist has repeated these three words/concepts throughout the house. He also used string to create temporary sculptures and to frame painted elements in the house.

La Casa Dipinta is quite interesting in many ways. I'm not really a modern art fan, so it certainly helped that Elisa was around to explain it to me. Furthermore, I have to confess that I would have done a "cleaner" execution of many of the line segments. Nonetheless, it was a really interesting and intimate look at the process of modern art...as demonstrated by one individual...in the here and now.

Love,

Alexandra