Milan, December 21st, 2024
Louis Fratino in conversation with Micola Clara Brambilla
I want to start with something you once told me that struck me: as a child, you would draw constantly, going through vast amounts of paper — so much so that your mother once cautioned you about not wasting it. This image of you, endlessly drawing, has stayed with me. I’ve seen echoes of it in different contexts: when you’re at home, travelling, or signing your books. Drawing seems fundamental to your work. You’ve referenced a beautiful passage by Wayne Koestenbaum, where he describes drawing as “the need to verify (or disguise) an internal fantasy by giving it visual form […] Drawing grows disoriented, loses contact with its supervisors […] that amnesiac medium lacks the intelligence (or the ordinariness) to remain accountable to its masters.” Could you delve into your relationship with drawing? Do you feel it’s the foundation of your creative process?
LF Drawing remains for me the primary method I have to manifest my thoughts. And I mean thought in a way that I do not mean theme, conceptual subject, or even imagination. I mean thought in the sense that drawing remains the only way I know how to physically respond to the kind of abstract, wandering, circular, obsessive interior dialogue that we all have. That’s what I love so much about Koestenbaum’s description: it explains so well the directionless nature of drawing that allows it to mirror the activity of the mind so well. Drawing in my sketchbook brings me closest to the goal I have in the studio: letting things out unedited, a bit embarrassing, confessionally. And it is because of its truly humble materials such as carbon, graphite, pigmented powder on scraps on paper or books left in the bottoms of bags. This meaningless, nothing material, allows the subject to come forth unselfconsciously. And that for me is the root of all art, the thing that was made because there was no choice.
“I believe that paintings have lives of their own beyond the studio—lives that I neither feel I can nor want to control. If a painting were to transcend my little world and reach someone else through some kind of political activity, who am I to stop it?”
Your works convey a profound sense of intimacy, often through the depiction of male bodies and queer relationships, but also of your family members, and friends, and moments you share with them. How do you navigate the boundary between the personal and the universal in your work? What guides your decision to translate certain details of your personal life onto the canvas, and how do you determine your subjects?
LF I think all great art comes from an impulse to depict a reality. This isn’t to say that realism factors very much into my work, but rather that all style and all form comes from some kind of sensation that needs to be expressed. For me it has always seemed natural to use my immediate surroundings — which invariably include myself and the ones closest to me — as subjects. I would also consider the artwork from history that I love as part of my immediate surroundings. This collision of what is seen as imagery and what is experienced physically becomes something beyond my autobiography — or that is the hope. Usually, where these images intersect, I find compelling subject matter for painting. For example, the reclining nude, which occurs both daily in my life and continually throughout painting history, or the table laden with food and objects. I also think about painting as an act of respect or care, because it demands time, skill, and almost a kind of abasement when done properly. As such, it becomes an act of recognition for things loved.
Painting isn’t always a representation of a specific moment in time—it can often be a projection of memory or desire. Would you say this dynamic plays a significant role in your work?
LF I would say that a painting is something beyond the self, or that, when it works, things happen that feel beyond my capabilities—even if I control them. So, I must be very open to the demands of painting which do not necessarily correspond to the characteristics of memory and certainly not facts. Memory is something I am very curious about. More often than not, I draw from memory and think of my work as illustrating the feebleness or flamboyance of memory. Desire is much like painting in that it can obliterate or invent memory, altering the way we see, touch and taste things. Therefore desire — and its processional imagery — does play a significant role in my painting. It suits the work materially and conceptually from my point of view.
We live in a time when queer bodies are deeply politicised. How do you balance the urgency of creating deeply personal art with the awareness that your work will inevitably be interpreted through a political lens?
LF As I mentioned in my earlier response regarding the inevitability of true artwork, I am not in control of the interpretations of my work from a political or moral perspective. Images of sex can be politicised, but that has about as little to do with making painting as it does with having sex. This isn’t to say that I wish to shield my work from a political life, but I don’t feel strongly attached to it in that context. I believe that paintings have lives of their own beyond the studio—lives that I neither feel I can nor want to control. If a painting were to transcend my little world and reach someone else through some kind of political activity, who am I to stop it?
In your paintings, the domestic sphere is a recurring theme — beds, windows, sinks, tables cluttered with objects, living rooms, and kitchens… What does the private space symbolise for you? How does it intertwine with the representation of desire in your work?
LF I believe the relationship between the domestic and the erotic is a rich subject and the stage on which most of our lives unfold. My penchant for representing the erotic is, at least for me, made more believable and heightened by the fact that it takes place in an environment where one might also find the coffee cup half-emptied by the figure suggested in the next room. If I can find a philosophy in my painting, it might be that we can look at something as discarded or as easily forgotten as a cluttered table with the same aroused enthusiasm that we look at our naked lover.
Read the full interview on Muse February Issue 65.
