Art: Shoes

Paris’ Bernard Lorjou may stick to his conviction that art is a solemn business; to Rome’s Fabius Gugel it is no such thing. Gugel’s working philosophy is expressed in a neat double negative. “Nothing,” he says, “pays off more in the end than not being too serious in art. It’s all right to make other people think it’s serious, but the artist should never take it too seriously himself.”

German-born Fabius Gugel went to Rome 20 years ago. Since then he has sprouted a black goatee and decided to stay. At 40, he thrives at his profession, which embraces theater sets, commercial art, window displays, religious murals, duplications of old paintings, book illustration and, lately, elevator decorating. Last week Gugel was dabbing away at an elevator set up on the terrace of his studio overlooking the Roman Forum. A well-heeled countess named Anna Maria Cicogna takes Gugel’s art seriously enough to have offered him $1,600 to decorate the elevator for a new pink marble palace she is building in Venice.

Seasons for a Countess. A push-button affair designed to carry two people up to the countess’ boudoir, the elevator did not give Gugel much elbow room. He fitted it with a continuous mural done in deep perspective, to make the contraption look “as light and airy as possible.” For subject matter he took the four seasons. “This is a very commonplace idea,” he wrote the palace architect, “but I think you’ll find the pictures a bit unusual.”

That was putting it mildly. For Gugel, spring was best symbolized by an elephant and some trumpets. “Spring is quiet,” he says, as if to make everything clear. Summer is, of course, hotter; Gugel captured it in a high-heeled shoe of a curious sort. The heel of the shoe was formed by a half-naked girl, and the toe by a half-draped man on his knees before her. For fall, Gugel painted an “invisible” deer—outlined by flying spears topped off with a pair of antlers. Winter was a little man made of bark and a shoe made of snow.

Shoes for Grandfather. Gugel surveyed his accomplishment with customary aplomb. If the results were too lurid, they might be softened, he thought, by proper illumination, say red and blue light bulbs.

Such tongue-in-cheek stunts have earned Gugel the reputation of being a surrealist (TIME, Nov. 17, 1947). But like Salvador Dali, he now dislikes the tag; it is too tired for publicity purposes. “Surrealism,” Gugel says, “started as an art of the subconscious, while I try to be as conscious as possible.” Though he dotes on shoes to such an extent that they have become his trademark, Gugel insists that they have no Freudian implications for him. His grandfather, Gugel explains, was in the shoe business: “And I was always fond of grandfather.”