Mati is pretty much my apex of psychedelic and surreal painting, along with his kooky friend Salvador Dali. With influences from the Italian renaissance and the Flemish masters to Indian tantric art, Mati ripped through a sampling of Islamic, Jewish and Christian cultures. He changed his name to Abdul Mati because he said every Jew should take an Arab name and vice versa. He painted Santana's Abraxas, Miles Davis' Bitches Brew and Live Evil album covers, along with work for Jerry Garcia, Jim Hendrix and John F. Kennedy: visions of cobalt, swirling, fire skies, panoramic orgies, flying meteors, and beautiful bodies with stars falling from their hair.

I wrote him once, sent him some work to which he replied that he liked it "a lot, except for the big Joni Mitchel face with the guitar and a stiff upper lip and a mean look. Putting famous people into your work will not improve your art." It's not even based on Joni, but whatever, I was beyond happy. He signed the letter, "NO RUSH!" He later signed a book for me:
"Spread the Word: SLOW DOWN AND/TO SAVE THE WORLD!"

Mati was a friend of the family of a friend. I'd always hoped to go to Spain to visit him, to see where the master lived and worked and perhaps rub the buddha's belly. On September 6th, 2001 I flew to Barcelona. For a week I kept putting off contacting him, until I finally decided to call... on the 11th. That morning, my call was postponed. But two weeks later I called Mati from outside of the Dali museum in Figueres. And with a bag of wild rice I had picked up from our mutual fam in NY, I was invited to his home to deliver it.

So, I made a pilgrimage to my mentor. A cliché, just like Mati had done before me, to Dali himself. Mati told me that the first time he tried to approach the artist, he arrived outside his home and just kind of looked at the door. He had visions, like thousands before him, that the Master would see the student's work and declare him his heir apparent. The next genius. But Mati never got the guts to knock, and left. He later met Dali in the 70s, when living in New York and doing work for Miles, Hendrix ("so shy.."), Timothy Leary and others. It's a whole other story, but Mati described Salvador: a wholly selfish, yet generous, supersexual / assexual. Mati said he'd seen Dali masturbate over a cantaloupe, with limp penis, ejaculating while crying out, "Oh Divine Sperm!"

Mati was born in Germany in 1932 and grew up in Palestine after his parents fled the Nazis. I think living through that and similar world experiences gave him a rather jaded perspective onto the events of New York the weeks before I arrived. His response to my paranoia supreme was something like a weary nod. As he wrote in his 1976 book God Jokes:
"The end of the world is very near. So take your time."

When I visited him, he lived a ten minute hike from the main road, up a winding sand path filled with the most twisted olive trees, and a white mare who ate apples out of my friend Jesse and I's hands. Mati joked that his daily walk enabled his lungs to handle a joint every once in a while. His house was rented from a Spanish fashion designer, his battered Mercedes was a barter for an old painting. And the view from it all was over the goat-treaded hills looking straight out to the ocean. Inside he had a collection of African and Flamenco Cds and a humble art collection. There was a simple thrift store portrait of a Spanish gentleman that Mati was in awe of, along with a couple Ethiopian prints in cheap frames. One windowsill was set up as a collectibles and deities shrine, completely run over with cobwebs. "I let the spiders build their webs there, that way they stay out of everything else." There was also a fingerpainted Picasso etching hanging off-kilter, opposite a drawing signed "Salvador." I held my breath, but it wasn't the D; it was Mati's son, fulfulling a family tradition of naming a son the name of your favorite painter.

I think the funniest thing Mati said that day, letting us look through the paintings that he still had propped up against the wall of his living room, was that he used to draw beautiful naked women, and now he drew rocks. "I have noticed that I am lately becoming what in my earlier and silly years I would have qualified as rather silly." He doesn't know where many of his pieces are. "Crucifixion" was there. Awesome, massive, the most colorful erect shemales and buggery I've ever seen. Still banned after all these years, Mati said it recently had shut down a Madrid gallery. "Dakar Angel" was there. Plus a new one he was working on, one of his "improved paintings" (Mati has a whole book of thrift store paintings that he took into his studio and.. "improved") that looked a little Robert Williams with a little alarm clock sticking out of the canvas. He still was doing portraits, as well. Probably paying some rent. For whatever reason, Mati never became a Dali or Warhol personality cult superstar with endless funds. But he seemed happy in his home, pictures of his children and grandchild on his fridge, daily drives to town, painting in the afternoon. People still writing him; he even received a visitor every once in a while on the same pilgrimage we talked about (there were two skateboards left for his sons by two American pros who had come by a couple months before. Mati let Jesse and I use them to skate down the snaky highway to Deia central).

Mati was one of the dynamic mystics who grace our eternal landscape from time to time. It wasn't just the era.. it wasn't just the LSD... Quoting Dali, he also said, "I don't take drugs. I am drugs." Visiting him was a peaceful respite from the chaos I thought about back home. "Do you seriously believe that by being serious you'll live forever?"

Thank you for your hospitality, Mr. Klarwein.