Artist Robert Cenedella Became A Deadhead At 80
The Grateful Dead
The artist Robert Cenedella discovered the Grateful Dead and pot smoking at age 80. The painter was commissioned to do a painting of the legendary rock band The Grateful Dead in 2019. The renowned artist Robert Cenedella went all-in on studying his subject, attending five of their concerts, pre-pandemic, and smoking marijuana for the first time. These classic counterculture rituals have been a rite of passage for college-age folks since the 1960s, and like many of them, Cenedella became a fan. Unlike most, he began his “Deadhead” journey at age 80.
A Rabble Rouser in The Art World
A longtime rabble rouser in the art world, Cenedella was profiled in 2015 in the critically acclaimed documentary Art Bastard, and his body of work includes political and pop cultural satiric work including The Presence of Man and Fin del Mundo.
So Many Roads
While the prolific artist works in a range of genres, including still life, landscape, and sculpture, as well as commercial work for companies like Absolut Vodka, experiencing the unique grateful Dead culture was a completely new adventure full of surprises. “That kind of music, it just was not my thing,” says Cenedella. “I’m thinking; what am I doing? When I met Jerry Garcia’s daughter and I told her that, more or less, I was becoming a deadhead at 80, she said, ‘Well, what music did you listen to?’ And I said, ‘Beethoven.’ She replied, ‘Oh, my father would’ve loved you. Beethoven was his favorite.’” The finished piece So Many Roads (2021), a mural-sized triptych portraying the Grateful Dead from 1965 to the present and into the future, is being exhibited at Carlton Fine Arts on Madison Avenue in Manhattan.
The Allure of The Grateful Dead Universe
As Cenedella got more into the Dead universe, he began to understand that it was more than just a rock band and lead singer, Jerry Garcia’s, brilliance as a musician. Attending five concerts within a four-month period, Cenedella realized that the magical thing was the band’s followers, many of whom had attended hundreds of concerts over the decades. “Call it a cult or a religion, but it’s most benevolent. It was a wonderful atmosphere that existed with these people; they knew every tune.” He discovered that famous scholars were fans, like Joseph Campbell, who had written about becoming a Deadhead later in life. At one concert someone handed him a joint. “I had never smoked any kind of cigarettes—even though people look at my art and think this guy must
be stoned all the time, but that really isn’t the truth. There was a worldly feeling that I got; it was a very positive group,” Cenedella explains. “In other words, it was not political. And here I am, a political painter for years, and so it was kind of a relief to be working on a subject like this and getting into it and not taking on Washington or whatever people over the years that I wasn’t too thrilled with.”
Island in Maine
It wasn’t only a Grateful Dead awakening that formed the backdrop of this project. Amid the depths of the pandemic, he left his NYC townhouse of 38 years and moved to a new space in Maine, in July 2020. He luckily found an ideal home with studio space with 40-foot ceilings and skylights that was close to his island in Maine where he spends summers. He finished the painting there, while adjusting to the new studio after 60 years in NYC.
Trailblazing Digital Anti-Counterfeiting Hologram Technology
A trailblazer, Cenedella was the first, in 1994, to come up with the concept of selling stock in a single painting. Critics viewed it as too commercial, but he felt that the art world had become very commercial, with more focus on the prices than on the art itself. Today there are more than 20 companies selling stock in artworks.
Now he and a partner have come up with a new anti-counterfeiting and tampering hologram technology that will be used on the So Many Roads digital archival prints. Featuring UV invisible marking, micron text hologram technology, and kinematic and color movement patterns, it will also be applied on all of Cenedella’s existing limited edition digital archival prints, ilkscreens, stone lithographs, drawings, and posters.
“I might be first again in using this concept. It seems like it’s absolutely airtight. There’s no possible way of forging that,” Cenedella says. He hopes the new technology will also spur
interest in artworks. “People love technology so much that they forget it’s not more important than whatever the hell it’s connected to.”
