The Curious Builder

Index

Hudney, Sutej IX, X, XI, 7, 9, 25, 58, 60, 61, 64
   Plates   5,10, 15
   Childhood   70, 71
   Education   78, 79, 80
   Early relationship with family   84
   Enters academy, honors   84
   Arrest and bewilderment   85
   Formation of spatial theories   90
   “Romance of Ardoy, The”   92
   Second arrest   93
   Early voyages, life in the Pyrenees   95
   Marriage   95
   Abandons landscape painting   96
   Third arrest   97
   Weakness of character, inconstancy   101
   First signs of illness, advocation
     of celibacy   110
   Collaborations with Fernando Gee   111
   Composes lines beginning: “Death, wouldst that I had
     died / While thou wert still a mystery.   117
   Consequences of fame, violent rows,
     professional disputes   118, 119
   Disavows all his work   120
   Bigamy, scandals, illness, admittance of
     being “easily crazed, like snow.”   128
   Theories of perspective published   129
   Birth of children   129
   Analysis of important works:
     Wine glass with fingerprints
     Nude on a blue sofa
     The drunken fox trappers
     Man wiping tongue with large towel
     Hay bales stacked in a field
     Self portrait
     Self portrait with cat
     Self portrait with frozen mop
     Self portrait with belching duck   135
   Correspondence with Cecco Angolieri   136
   Dispute over attribution of lines: “I have as large
     supply of evils / as January has not flowerings.”   137
   Builds first greenhouse   139
   Falling-out with Angolieri   139
   Flees famine   144
   Paints Starved cat eating snow   145
   Arrested for selling sacks of wind
     to gullible peasants   146
   Imprisonment and bewilderment   147
   Disavows all his work   158
   Invents the collar stay   159
   Convalescence with third wife   162
   Complains of “a dense and baleful wind
     blowing the words I write off the page.”   165
   Meets with Madam T.   170
   Departures, mortal premonitions, “I think
   I’m about to snow.”   176
   Disavows all his work   181
   Arrest and pardon   182
   Last days   183
   Last words   184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190

Paul Violi (July 20, 1944 – April 3, 2011)

from Splurge (Sun, 1982)