Louis Cicotello

 
A good man went down last week---no, a great man went down, though he wouldn't much like me saying that. Louis Cicotello was the chair of the Visual Arts Department (and later of the Visual and Performing Arts Department) from 1984 until 2007. I was on the university hiring committee that brought him to campus.  The visual arts department was in hilarious disarrary.  Rumor had it that the previous chair had submitted his resignation by slapping a trout on the dean's desk and saying I quit (I hope this is true). The department needed a senior member, a real artist, a real teacher and an actual grown up to come in and settle things down,a person the department might also respect and might even like. Louis was that rare man.  He served a very long tenure as chair because we didn't trust anyone else do it.  He stood up for us, he respected us, he kept his eye on the ball and the budgets, he never threw his weight around. He was a great chair, really far better than we deserved. He was a real artist, and a real teacher too. One of our happiest experiences at the university was the Bauhaus project Louis and I devised together: he taught a course on the legendary art school (this was the foundation of his own very highly developed aesthetic), I devised a performance piece about the Bauhaus with theatre students, and art students and our costumers recreated the fantastic costumes of Oskar Schlemmer featured in our production. It was all great stuff, in the spirit of Dessau, Black Mountain, Walter Gropius, Joseph Albers and Louis Cicotello.

 

Louis was a highly disciplined and active artist, working mostly in sculpture and collage, but he was also, and in the best sense of the word, a humanist. He took an interest in ideas. history, popular culture, everything around him. He wrote two rather dense books with Raphael Sassower.  He studied inscriptions and carvings on cemetaries. His tomato salad was incomparable. I always loved talking with Louis--he was so intelligent and enthusiastic and ready to laugh.  He was full of feeling but no sentimentalist; he had a lovely mordant side. He could be cranky. He had a fine eye for the authentic in life. His energy was prodigious; it seemed he always had time to do everything and he did do everything.  I could say to Louis, "could you build a giant mound with a big hole in it for a play by Samuel Beckett?  Of course he could. He also designed and built wonderful sets for The Threepenny Opera and The Road to Mecca. If you needed something made nobody else could make--Greek statuary in styrofoam, a room in Dante's Inferno--you asked Louis to make it and he just did it. When we wanted to honor our theater's founder, Dusty Loo (another man gone too soon) with something a little more personal than the usual brass plaque, we asked Louis if he would make a little Dusty Loo light box.  And he knocked that out too, a really wonderful thing mounted in our theatre, at least as much a tribute to the artist as his subject---take a good look at it and smile next time you pass by. Nearly everything Louis did he did without ego; and he seemed to enjoy himself too. For him, thinking and playing and working were all one, and very nearly all the time.

Louis had something close to perfect manners, and this, as Chekhov would explain,means he was a very evolved human being.  He was a lovely host, attentive to his guests, recognizing who they were, engaged but highly companionable. 

Louis had a very cosmopolitan sensibility--he was buzzing with ideas and theory. But he loved the outdoors, the very great outdoors, the rocks and the water. Louis threw fish down too---but on my kitchen table after he pulled them out of a stream.  He had as much range as anyone I've met.

He was deeply crazy of course.  Nearly all interesting people are.  You could feel Louis bouncing, like a Ferrari at a stoplight, completely under control, but ready to talk, ready to go. One way or another he was inclined to be on the move-- in body, mind and spirit.  After his retirement where he most liked moving was in the wonderful slot canyons of Utah.  I think he liked their scuptural forms; he liked moving his terrific wiry body with and against them.  He was not foolhardy but he liked a bit of danger. He was a man. As of this writing I haven't the details of his fatal fall, down 100 feet while rappelling into a canyon.  I would very much like to hear those details, but from Louis himself, preferably just after he's served me his tomato salad. I can certainly hear how he would begin: "It was amazing, man, [he snorts with laughter] I had let out some rope and was working myself down and then . . . . .  amazing!"

What the hell.  I think I will stop here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Sean]

Murray - that was a hearty rave on a wonderful guy. I too, imagine Louis recounting the strangely marvelous facts of what happened as he flew off that taut rope into the great sublime.

[Kathy Andrus]

thank you Murray - that is beautiful. I feel like I lost my big brother. What will we do without him?

[Kim Sayers-Newlin]

Thank-you, You captured the excellent truth of the artist, man, thinker...

[suzanne]

Thank you. Lou you will be missed.

[Csdass]

Murray, well said, well said. Thank you for that most eloqent description of an amazing man!

[Kay Williams Johnson]

Wow Murray- this really captures Louis- brilliant, funny, loud, moving around a lot. The IQ of the art community plummeted with this loss- Louis was seriously able to talk about anything at a dinner table, and we will miss his big old laugh.

[Julia Evans]

Murray, that was fabulous. Thank you for your comments. I never think of Louis without thinking of him energetically (and dangerously) waving the pointer around as he lectured on 20th-century art history. One day he smacked it on something and it broke. The next day he was back with it in hand; repaired with electrical tape. He was a rare gem of a man.

[micki Tschur]

I am so sad to hear his accident. He was a great teacher. I will never forget the time Louis, Andy T., and I climbed Mt. Princeton and got lost in a snow storm on the way down, frighting but funny- what an adventurer he was.

[Lorraine Marie Arangno]

That was so beautifully said -- Thank you Murray! I cannot imagine the hallowed halls of UCCS without him. He was such a wonderful colleague and friend.

"Sweet is the Memory of a Dead Friend."
Epicurus

[Tamera]

What a perfect encapsulation of Louis' personality. I think I'd sum it all up by saying that Louis was just really a neat person, and we're all fortunate to have known him. He was endlessly patient with me during my bratty art student days, and for that I'll be forever grateful. I'm so sad to hear of his untimely passing. I don't know what else to say. I'm grieving with all of you others who miss him so.

[Andy Tirado]

Louis' passing has been a truly consequential loss of my life and, I know, the lives of many.Teacher, mentor, and friend, his passing is hard to swallow. How I wish I could hug and kiss him now. Tough. Howebeit life goes on. Thank you, Murray, for your eloquent words here and at the memorial service.

[pat alea]

I have read your beautiful response to the loss of Louis over and over and have forwarded it to friends who are artists of every stripe and lovers of their own lives. All of us now share the power of authenticity in a fresh way. Thank you, Murray. Louis and Millie and Sarah once spent time with us camping in Montana and while Louis was enigmatic that summer his women were joyous and endured his absenses into the wild with confidence. Louise's family was lit from within.

[Shanda]

I didn't know Louis Cicotello. I read about his death in the American Alpine Club's 2013 book of accidents. It was a tragic story, for both Louis and his brother, David. I wanted to know more, and a Google search brought me to this page. I sure like what you wrote, and I feel a sense of loss, as though I got to know Louis a little bit. What a lovely tribute. Thank you.