ART
ARTIST ROBERT CENEDELLA BECAME A DEADHEAD AT 80 By Bennett Marcus coming a deadhead at 80, she said, ‘Well, what music did you listen to?’ And I said, ‘Beethoven.’ She replied, ‘Oh, my father would’ve loved you. Beethoven was his favorite.’ ” The finished piece, So Many Roads (2021), a mural-sized triptych portraying the Grateful Dead from 1965 to the present and into the future, is being exhibited at Carlton Fine Arts on Madison Avenue in Manhattan. THE GRATEFUL DEAD The artist Robert Cenedella discovered the Grateful Dead and pot smoking at age 80. The painter was commissioned to do a painting of the legendary rock band The Grateful Dead in 2019. The renowned artist went all-in on studying his subject, attending five of their concerts and smoking marijuana for the first time. These classic counterculture rituals have been a rite of passage for college-age folks since the 1960s, and like many of them, Cenedella became a fan. Unlike most, he began his Deadhead journey at age 80. A RABBLE ROUSER IN THE ART WORLD A longtime rabble rouser in the art world, Cenedella was profiled in the 2015 critically acclaimed documentary Art Bastard, and his body of work includes political and pop-culture satiric work, including Santa on the Cross and Fin del Mundo. SO MANY ROADS While the prolific artist works in a range of genres, including still life, landscape, and sculpture as well as commercial work for companies like Absolut Vodka, experiencing the unique Grateful Dead culture was a completely new adventure full of surprises. “That kind of music, it just was not my thing,” says Cenedella. “I’m thinking, What am I doing? When I met Jerry Garcia’s daughter and I told her that, more or less, I was be-
THE ALLURE OF THE GRATEFUL DEAD UNIVERSE As Cenedella got more into the Dead universe, he began to understand that it was more than just a rock band and lead singer Jerry Garcia’s brilliance as a musician. Attending five concerts within four months, Cenedella realized that the magical thing was the band’s followers, many of whom had attended hundreds of concerts over the decades. “Call it a cult or a religion, but it’s most benevolent. It was a wonderful atmosphere that existed with these people; they knew every tune.” He discovered that famous scholars were fans, like Joseph Campbell, who had written about becoming a Deadhead later in life. At one concert someone handed him a joint. “I had never smoked any kind of cigarettes — even though people look at my art and think This guy must be stoned all the time, but that really isn’t the truth. There was a worldly feeling that I got; it was a very positive group,” Cenedella explains. “In other words, it was not political. And here I am, a political painter for years, and so it was kind of a relief to be working on a subject like this and getting into it and not taking on Washington or whatever people over the years that I wasn’t too thrilled with.” ISLAND IN MAINE It wasn’t only a Grateful Dead awakening that formed the backdrop of this project. He left his NYC townhouse of 38 Social Life
