BONUS NUMBER 122: SEX CHANGE!

(Did You Sleep With the Models?)

No, no, not that kind. This metamorphosis takes place on canvas, not down there. But like roughly one-half of surgical sex changes, here something is added rather than subtracted.

I’m sorry to say that I have no memory of the artist. I don’t recall corresponding with him, nor speaking by phone. Perhaps he was the discovery of associate editor George De Stefano, who wrote the Mandate essay. It’s possible that he visited the office while I was on vacation.

And now I’m blushing. I googled the name and here is what appeared: Marco Silombria, not “Solombria.” Under the correct spelling of his name, he received wide recognition during his lifetime (1936-2014). I’m certain the mistake was not George De Stefano’s, who was meticulous in writing, editing, and proofreading. Perhaps it was mine, though the guilty finger points toward the art department, whose slapdash disregard of words caused constant problems. Clif, head of the department for several years, had an excellent eye for design. He and I worked well together, despite many blowups, and I credit the two of us with moving the magazines from drab, limp-dick ‘70s sameness to what I like to call Eighties Moderne. That said, I’ll add a line that explains Clif’s verbal challenges. In a note left on my desk, he once misspelled his own name as “Cleif.”

Which is the real Botticelli “Birth of Venus” and which is the mock? Same question for Goya’s “Naked Maja.”

Manet’s “Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe,” Ingres’ “The Turkish Bath,” and “Gabrielle d’Estrées and One of Her Sisters” by an unknown painter of the Fontainbleau School

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These are two of several works by Marco Silombria that we used as illustrations for stories in Mandate

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Another artist whose work shows the influence of European forerunners is Gene Dodak. His sculptures, however, are the opposite of parody; they revere the work of Greek and Roman sculptors. Dodak’s homage to the ancients appeared in Playguy in June, 1985.

Compare Dodak’s work with actual sculptures from ancient Greece and Rome.

The Greek torso at left, the Roman one at right

When I googled Gene Dodak, I found that he’s as active now as he was in the ‘80s. In the meantime, his work has taken a number of turns from European classics — for instance, totems and Polynesian forms. Here’s a recent picture of the artist at work. To learn more, visit genedodak.com.

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