Kenneth Radu Essays - The Art of Adamo Macri
Kenneth Radu has published books of fiction, nonfiction and poetry. His work has been nominated for a Governor General’s award and twice received the Quebec Writers’ Federation prize for best English-language fiction. He also has written extensively for the online cultural magazine, Salon .II. He has recently completed the manuscript of a new novel, which is now undergoing revisions.
The Monster in Adamo Macri’s Art
Kenneth Radu has published books of fiction, nonfiction and poetry. His work has been nominated for a Governor General’s award and twice received the Quebec Writers’ Federation prize for best English-language fiction. He also has written extensively for the online cultural magazine, Salon .II. He has recently completed the manuscript of a new novel, which is now undergoing revisions.
The Monster in Adamo Macri’s Art
Kenneth Radu - 2026
I have been thinking about monsters and the art of Adamo Macri. Recently, after re-reading Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, I watched Guillermo del Toro’s cinematic rendition of his version of her book. I had also read coincidentally a critical biography not only of Mary Shelly but also of...
I have been thinking about monsters and the art of Adamo Macri. Recently, after re-reading Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, I watched Guillermo del Toro’s cinematic rendition of his version of her book. I had also read coincidentally a critical biography not only of Mary Shelly but also of...
A Man of Many Hats: Macri's Millinery Motif
Kenneth Radu - 2026
Various characters in cinema, art and literature are so closely associated with their hats that the two become inseparable, the hat forming part of character and narrative: for example, Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and his deerstalker cap, or Humphrey Bogart as...
Worn Out: Adamo Macri’s Prêt à Porter
Kenneth Radu - 2025
The artist Adamo Macri no sooner disposes of one head then he grows another like the many-headed hydra, so when focussing on one or two portraits and building responses (I think building is the right word here), we are always aware that new portraits may well undercut or challenge...
Tricky Titles: Adamo Macri Portraits
Kenneth Radu - 2025
While admiring Adamo Macri’s intriguing portrait, Aerosol, I remembered holding a candle and walking with my mother before midnight outside the Orthodox church of my childhood, a symbolic ritual in celebration of the risen Christ on Easter. Even though it’s been decades since I’ve...
Kenneth Radu - 2025
While admiring Adamo Macri’s intriguing portrait, Aerosol, I remembered holding a candle and walking with my mother before midnight outside the Orthodox church of my childhood, a symbolic ritual in celebration of the risen Christ on Easter. Even though it’s been decades since I’ve...
In My Dark Gallery: Recent Adamo Macri Portraits
Kenneth Radu - 2025
It’s common knowledge, or commonly stated, that we cannot really know anyone and that we all wear masks of one kind or another. As an artist, Adamo Macri has made stunning use of masking throughout his oeuvre, paradoxically concealing as much as revealing. I think it’s useful to...
Not So Basic Black: Portraits by Adamo Macri
Kenneth Radu - 2024
Two black leather-clad bikers on hefty motorcycles slowed down in front of my house this past summer, as if they wanted to stop and speak to me. Only a few metres from the roadside, I was in the midst of deadheading geraniums. Both drivers wore a black helmet with a black...
Let there be Gold: Three Portraits by Adamo Macri
Kenneth Radu - 2024
They loved their gold and jewels, those Russian aristocrats and Indian maharajahs. What signified power and privilege, social superiority and limitless wealth more than ropes of pearls, clusters of diamonds, wreaths of rubies, and earrings of emeralds. That sexually adventurous...
The Agonies & The Execution: Portraits by Adamo Macri
Kenneth Radu - 2022
Two recent portraits by Adamo Macri have aroused memories of a difficult period during my undergraduate years. I often walked to the Art Gallery of Ontario and spent a couple of hours between classes wandering among and pausing before various works of art. Macri’s...
Veiled Illusions: New Portraits by Adamo Macri
Kenneth Radu - 2022
I have been preoccupied with two recent portraits by Adamo Macri. It wasn't until I was working in a garden among irises in June when various ideas came together. There's no logical explanation for this, but I believe it has something to do with the colour of these particular irises...
Adamo Macri: Pandemic Portraits
Kenneth Radu - 2021
What is art to do? Covid-19 has emphasized major fault lines in our society: the tragic neglect of the elderly, corrosive racism and xenophobia, social inequalities, the self-righteous posturing of politicians, anti-science hysteria, conspiracy theories and the glorification of ignorance are...
Adamo Macri’s Vlad the Beautiful
Kenneth Radu - 2021
Admiring his artistry, I cannot linger long over Adamo Macri’s extraordinary portrait, Vlad Ţepeş without remembering stories from my childhood. My parents’ boarder and family friend, born and raised in Romania, was particularly adept at impersonating a hungry vampire and other undead...
The Eyes Have It: Adamo Macri’s Sunglasses
Kenneth Radu - 2020
Sometimes focusing on a specific detail in a work of art leads me more deeply into the artist’s vision. In the essay Hirsute Pleasures, for example, I wrote about the appearance and effect of hair in Adamo Macri’s many portraits. The other day, unable to make up my mind, I spent...
Fungible Beauty
Kenneth Radu - 2019
This November I have been thinking about Adamo Macri’s portraits, specifically the one entitled Utterly Fungible and the Suspension of Disbelief. I’ve also been perusing pictures of the Alexander Palace on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, Russia, and remembering my visit there...
Sea Change: Adamo Macri’s Dust Roe
Kenneth Radu - 2019
Not long ago I was watching Monty Don, the English gardening guru, as he wandered among and expatiated about the fabulous water features of the Villa d’Este in Italy, during a segment of his television series on great Italian gardens. When he sauntered by the three ducts of Le Cento...
Adamo Macri’s Triffid and I
Kenneth Radu - 2018
I have been thinking about art, botany, monsters and sex. It never fails to impress me how a portrait by Adamo Macri can root itself in my mind like a plume poppy or snakeroot or any perennial of your choice, however common or exceptional. One early morning this past week...
Behind this Shield: Adamo Macri’s Ancile Portrait
Kenneth Radu - 2018
Adamo Macri’s recent exhibition, Identity Matrix, held in Montreal’s Erga Gallery (November, 2017), is certainly well named. The collective portraits bring home the fact that viewers should be wary of making absolute assumptions about his art, however much this particular admirer can...
Hirsute Pleasures: Getting in Adamo Macri’s Hair
Kenneth Radu - 2017
I have been thinking about hair in various portraits by the intriguing artist Adamo Macri. Coincidentally or not, I have also been reading a fascinating ethnographic study called Entanglement: The Secret Lives of Hair by anthropologist Emma Tarlo. Attention to specific...
Out of the Desert He Rises: Distress and Macri’s Leaven’s Freedom
Kenneth Radu - 2016
Out of the sandstorm, out of the whirlwind he rises and then he pauses in the midst of seeing through veils of illusion, for he sees what we cannot, and he sees what we wish to see, but we behold him resting out of the maelstrom. Although blinded by sand, we are as dust unless we...
Macri’s Orgasmic Forge
Kenneth Radu - 2016
The night is thick with heat and windless humidity. I am restless and stimulated, my body temperature rising in the dark room as I stare at and am consumed by an extraordinary Macri image: Drop Curtain. I have no idea what Macri intends by this image, his title notwithstanding...
Serpents in my Dreams: Adamo Macri’s Snake Portraits
Kenneth Radu - 2016
Adamo Macri, the multi-media artist, is a fascinating snake slithering among the flora in my imaginary and real gardens, coiling in the undergrowth, and shedding one identity to reveal another. Most of us have a physiological and cultural reaction to snakes, something the artist...
Ghost in the Wings: Macri and Me
Kenneth Radu - 2015
Restless, unfocussed, strange inchoate stirrings, I rise from my desk and stare out the window. Partially illuminated, the gibbous moon filters its reflected light through the still leafy trees. A walk outside in the autumn chill would clarify my thoughts and relieve tensions, but my computer...
Alternative Waters: a Personal View of Recent Macri Portraits
Kenneth Radu - 2014
People familiar with Adamo Macri’s portraits may well experience an aesthetic shock to see a picture of the artist with his eyes wide open. So many of his self-portraits depict the eyes averted, lowered, askance, or rarely looking directly at the viewer that I was taken aback by a recent...
Behold the Man: Self-Portraits of Albrecht Dürer & Adamo Macri
Kenneth Radu - 2013
After long perusal of Adamo Macri’s fascinating self-portrait entitled Pinus Attis, I have become aware of having seen something similar before. To be sure, this is merely my own casual and arguably eccentric response to the multi-layered meanings of a Macri picture. The artist has...
Art of the Orifice: Adamo Macri’s Verboten
Kenneth Radu - 2012
The human body has always been the source of pleasure and revulsion, at once the embodiment of ecstasy and excrement, delight and disgust, beauty and brutality, dream and nightmare. In his great satire Gulliver’s Travels Jonathan Swift depends upon such antithesis in his portrayal...
Macri’s Pink Narrative
Kenneth Radu - 2012
In the film Funny Face starring the exquisite Audrey Hepburn and the light-as-air Fred Astaire, the dynamic Kay Thompson in her role of fashion editor proclaims that it’s time to “Think Pink!” We are then treated to a frenzy of pink haute couture. Of all colours in western society pink is...
Facing the Faces: the Facebook Self-portraits of Adamo Macri
Kenneth Radu - 2011
Self-portraiture and painting are almost synonymous. Albrecht Durer, Hans Holbein the Younger, Titian, Artemisia Gentileschi, Rembrandt, Elisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun, Francisco Goya, Mary Cassatt, Paul Cézanne, Edvard Munch, Emily Carr, Frida Kahlo, a legion of others: the walls of...
Cellular Excitement: An Appreciation of the Art of Adamo Macri
Kenneth Radu - 2010
In many of his drawings, photos, constructions and other pieces of art, Adamo Macri depicts various forms existing beneath the visible surfaces of the world, and the reality of secret miniscule life teeming in obscure places. He explores, or imagines, acts of creation from the...
Kenneth Radu is a Canadian writer. He was a shortlisted nominee for the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction at the 1988 Governor General's Awards for his short story collection The Cost of Living.
Novels | Short Stories | Poetry | Memoir
