Linda Yablonsky discusses Cookie Mueller and Vittorio Scarpati with Paul Pieroni

Saturday 30 September 2017 Studio Voltaire, London Writer Linda Yablonsky is joined by Paul Pieroni, curator of Putti's Pudding, to discuss the enduring humour, passion and intensity of Cookie Mueller and Vittorio Scarpati’s works and lives. Yablonsky and Mueller became close friends as neighbours in the West Village, and the character of Honey in Yablonsky’s novel The Story of Junk is loosely based on Mueller. She additionally contributed a key essay to the exhibition catalogue of the seminal show Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing at Artists Space NYC (1989), which included one of Scarpati’s drawings from the 'Putti's Pudding' series. Linda Yablonsky is a writer and critic. Yablonksky is leading contributor to Artforum’s Scene and Herd diary, and is also a contributor to T: The New York Times Style Magazine, W, ArtNews, among several others publications such as Wallpaper and Porter. Her novel, The Story of Junk, is set in the post-punk music, art and drug scene in downtown 1980’s Manhattan. Yablonsky is currently at work on a definitive book about the life and times of Jeff Koons, to be published in America by Henry Holt & Co by 2020. This talk forms part of the public programme accompanying Putti’s Pudding, an exhibition of works by Cookie Mueller and Vittorio Scarpati (9 September–12 November 2017). studiovoltaire.org/exhibitions/archive/cookiemuellervittorioscarpati Putti’s Pudding is a book and ‘final project’ by American writer and actor Mueller, and her husband, Italian artist Scarpati. Published in 1989, the same year both died from complications related to AIDS, it pairs drawings by Scarpati with writing by Mueller. Reimagined as an exhibition at Studio Voltaire, Putti’s Pudding features forty–five original felt–tip pen on notepad drawings made by Scarpati when he lost the ability to speak, accompanying texts by Mueller, and a public programme of talks, readings, screenings and performance.