Painting with Basquiat and Warhol was beautiful

Around his neck, on his black sweatshirt, is a silver necklace depicting eight slender female figures, the Ashta matrika goddesses, the eight mothers. “A Sadhu gave it to me at the Kumbh Mela. In the Trika tradition of Kashmir Tantric Shaivism, the goddesses are the mothers of the letters: the vowels are the seeds that fertilize the consonants that are wombs. As in so many other contemplative traditions, the purpose is to materialize spirit and spiritualize matter,” says artist Francesco Clemente, who frequently visited India since the 1970s. “Usually there are 7 goddesses on the medallions, but in this one there are 8, a number I prefer to 7. Number of the feminine in Orissa, where there are all those temples and where Tantra began and where everything is a multiple of 8.”