Cookie Mueller & Vittorio Scarpati: Putti’s Pudding

Published in 1989, “Putti’s Pudding” is an artists’ book conceived when both the artists, Cookie and her husband Vittorio, were dying for AIDS illness in New York’s Cabrini Medical Centre. The book, published in 1990 when they both died,  includes drawings by Scarpati with short texts by Mueller.

As Mueller explains in the introduction to ‘Putti’s Pudding’:

“As I write this, his life more or less hangs in the balance, both his lungs are collapsed, a complication of bouts with the pneumonia specific to AIDS. He’s attached by tubes to two machines called pneumothorax suction pumps. A tube the circumference of an American nickel coin is affixed into a chest incision that goes into the pleural lining of his lungs. Bubbling with water like tropical fish aquariums, these strange looking clear plastic machines drain the excessive fluid from his lungs while also inflating them, thus keeping him breathing. Out of sheer boredom with time passing, Vittorio asked for pens and pads to draw. With his indomitable spirit and vitality he set about rendering his reality though his talent.”

The exhibition is curated by Paul Pieroni in partnership with Studio Voltaire.