NEWSLETTER

http://www.unincorporatedmagazine.com/2011/07/20/herbert-hofers-million-dollar-miami-view

Credit:Shane Salazar

Herbert Hofer’s “Million Dollar” Miami View

[ 1 ] July 20, 2011 | Shane

The beauty is I get up in the morning, walk by my table and see something and start, and then I look and go “oh, two hrs passed again…” I had a cat for 18 years and she was the star poster 99 Miami Beach Festival of Arts, Relay for Life, Absolute Vodka, Cat Network, and she has been in the last ten thousands paintings. Throughout my career I’ve made over 20,000. There was always a black cat/white cat interaction in many of the paintings and after a while my collectors knew that that was me and my wife since she’s African-American. Only my collectors knew the whole storytelling behind it. It was fun; I lived in my paintings, in my little jungle. I love tropical places.

As an Austrian, Why did you decide to settle down in Miami Beach?

People called us pioneers because we came here in ’88 when it was a slum. Just like the industrial revolution of the 1900’s, Miami was pushed into the digital revolution; people don’t need to have an office in New York or Chicago anymore:, they can be on a penthouse or boat in south Florida. I call it now the “New Atlantis,” this is really what’s happening here. You have people from all over the world coming here: Europeans, south Americans, Asians–from everywhere–and you maybe have in Miami still a problem of less-educated people who fight each other, but world travelers meet in Miami beach for many reasons. They sit in the news café with people from all over the world. Some of them don’t know where Miami is but they know the News Café, and you sit next to someone who’s wearing blue jeans doing a million-dollar deal on their cell phone. It’s totally incredible, what happened here.

Who are you, what you do, and where are you from?

I’m Austrian and at age 22 I left Austria to venture in the world. By trade, I’m an architect. I worked one year in Austria and because of the political situation; the other party took over and fired all the young architects. I was disappointed with the world so I left and was ready to live a hippie life, and adventurer’s life. People used to call me “The Aristocrat Hippie” because I always had clean fingernails, you know? (laughs) That was fun. I lived in a certain style. From there I went to Germany, England, North Africa, and South Africa. I wanted to go to Istanbul and Israel because there were so many beautiful girls and when you’re young this is what’s attractive to you. As a stowaway from Morocco to Istanbul on a ship, my journey began. The ship landed in a completely different place and I was thrown out because they all got arrested smuggling hashish. I stood on the Autostrata in Naples with ten dollars. Finally I hitchhiked to Rome and landed in the middle of the night and walked to the city center. Standing there in the heart of Rome as the sun rose, I thought, “This is beautiful…” and I wanted to stay there for two weeks at least, but became twenty years. One day I saw a man painting so I took out my ballpoint pen and a piece of paper and began to draw the church. Someone bought it, and eventually people called me “L’artista!” I had never had a brush in my hand so I picked some up, got some paints, and started painting in the street, getting paid, and even had an audience with the pope. I have art in the Vatican gallery and started working as a stuntman for a spaghetti western. After several roles I became somewhat of an actor working with Fellini, Robert De Niro, Sergio Leone, and then got carried away to Greek television. I worked in Greece, 50 films in greek language as lead actor on television films. I was a self-taught painter and actor, and since I had a passport—which few people did at the time—I would get calls telling me to go to the airport Monday because I was needed for a film in Hong Kong. I would go there, shoot a movie for two weeks, and then stay there for three months. Then I’d go to Singapore and Indonesia and paint, and I always came back with an exhibition wherever I was.

How did you manage to get these exhibitions?

Well Austria is such a small country, when I went somewhere else I’d go to the Austrian embassy and say, “Put me on the mailing list; I’m an artist.” They would already be familiar with me from internal writings and I would go to other embassies as well, like the Greek embassy, for example, since I was a TV star in Greece. I would hold a “throwaway” exhibition in the villa I rented and by the time I got around to all the embassies I had nine ambassadors, their friends, their wives…I even wrote the mayor, presented a painting and said, “thank you for the hospitality”. I had my next exhibition in Washington DC and met the president of Indonesia while there. Some of the places I went to were much safer back then. You can’t go to the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Egypt, Iraq, or Iran and do what I did with as much ease anymore.

When you grow older, things change. The third world, as adventurous as it was, became the fourth world. As an artist, I’m on the front lines of business. My sales depend on whether or not people can afford luxury items. Nowadays, people need gas, need food…all the things that are more important. Because of my lifestyle, my career, my affinity for travel, I found myself being sent to certain areas of the world to analyze the political climate.

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http://www.unincorporatedmagazine.com/2011/07/20/herbert-hofers-million-dollar-miami-view-part-2/

Credit:Shane Salazar

Herbert Hofer’s “Million Dollar” Miami View Part 2

[ 1 ] July 20, 2011 | Shane

Being so well-traveled…why Miami Beach, specifically?

It can seem claustrophobic at times since you’re five hours from everything, but I came here at the perfect time. In the 80’s it was a slum; nobody wanted to live here and I thought, “Why not? It’s a beach, you’ve got palm trees…”

What made you want to be an architect?

I wanted to build dream castles. After the war everything was destroyed. I wanted to fix things. Little did I know as an Austrian at the time, we have professional aristocracy. In Austria, if your grandfather was an architect, and your father, you would just take over. But if you come from a working class family and become an architect you have to fight certain obstacles that other people don’t have. In America, a child may not even be born and yet they’ve already been written into Harvard or whatever school, you know? So, as a normal mortal you don’t really have a chance. This was the only mistake I ever made, choosing a profession where I would not be on top of the world; I would have to really work. I’m happy I did it, though, because it fulfilled my desire of that I wanted to do.

I lived in this small little town and I wanted to know: “What is beyond those blue mountains?” When I got a chance to go over those blue mountains a different adventure was waiting around every corner. It was very attractive and I’m so glad I did it because most people work all their lives at a job they hate in a place they despise and they say, “When I retire I’m going to go on a cruise, I’m going to vacation, I’m going to travel…” But you can’t do it then. When you’re old you get tired, you want to go to bed, and you can’t sleep in strange beds because your back hurts or whatever, so I’m glad I did it because now that I’m getting old, I’m never bored. Even if I sit and stare at the ocean for hours, I have these little movies playing in my head. If someone mentions Kyoto, I go right back. I can remember all the little temples, the feel of the streets. I’ve had adventures that people only read about in travel catalogs.

What other jobs have you had in your past?

I never had a job. I was either painting or acting.

That’s awesome. And now you’ll never have to go down that road.

I sit at home in the morning, looking out the window, sipping my coffee, listening to the news about two fatalities, some rollover on the highway, and it’s sad that people sometimes drive two hours to work at a shitty job and then drive two hours home and are too tired to spend time with their girlfriends, their wife, their kids, their friends. They’re grumpy, and when the economy sinks, they snap. They may be the nicest people but they snap because they are overstressed and can’t take it anymore. You can’t pay your rent. Most of the sicknesses–cancer, for example–come from stress. They are directly caused by stress.

What advice would you give people our age, people in the latter half of their twenties?

Discipline and Responsibility. With those two things you can become a rocket scientist. Whatever you learn in school…you can never really use it in real life. It was never my game. I was a dreamer; I was building castles in my brain. I couldn’t use anything I learned in school except those two things, discipline and responsibility. I had things to take care of. I never depended on a government to bail me out. I’m a citizen of the world. This is me. I also learned something from the movies. I learned form being an actor that I’m the center of the world. I am the center of the universe. Right now, Shane, with you…it’s like we’re shooting a movie. I’m the lead actor; you’re my co-lead. I decide if I want to shoot a Drama. I decide if I want to shoot a comedy. I want to shoot a cool movie every day, me as the lead actor. I love beauty around me because I don’t want to shoot a horror movie. My movie is cool! This is my life. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?

Yes, absolutely.

I told my wife to always act as if there’s a camera on her “because then,” I said, “you’ll always be a lady.” This is the secret. This is the key that few people understand. There’s a span from birth to death and you have to fill it up with fun. People look at Miami and say to me “Wow! You live in a nice place!” And I say “Why don’t you? You moved to Pittsburgh because of a job. I found a nice place, moved there, and then looked around and said, ‘what can I do?’” I never became a slave to a job or an income. I never did it for money. I did it to survive, to be happy. Kids ask me if an artist can make any real money. To that I say that there are plenty of artists out there who do what they love and bring in enough to support their family. If you want to make real money…become a bank robber or a bank director. I’ve been married for 40 years. Whatever I do, I have a wife who leans over in the morning and says, “I love you.” This is a success.

The Monday’s with Herbert Hofer

[ 0 ] July 25, 2011 | Shane

What do you think of Monday’s?

To tell you the truth, I have no Mondays. I have no Tuesdays. I have no Wednesdays. Every day’s a Sunday for me.

Are your Monday’s typically stressful or peaceful?

I’m not stressed but I scream when something is not going my way. People say, “You will have a heart attack,” and I say, “No, that’s the only way to get it out.” The people who swallow their stress are the ones who have heart attacks.

How do you get your day started? Do you use an alarm clock, drink coffee or eat breakfast?

No alarm clock. I drink coffee in the morning, one cup black with sugar. I’ve trained my brain so well that I wake up on the minute whenever I want to. I need to wake up at 3:00, I’m maybe 1 minute before 3, looking at the clock. I usually don’t eat breakfast.

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Category: FEATURED, HAPPENINGS, The Mondays

“Austria and the World 2010”

Exihibition of 2 artists and friends

Dani Ma’rais Photographie Austria

Herbert Hofer Paintings USA

Great news for my international friends and collectors, I will

have a gallery exhibition in Austria with my paintings  together

with Austrian artist Daniela Marais, who I met a few years ago

at her Art Basel debut in Miami and fell in love with her art and

her philosophy as a young European, "kunstler". The up coming show

featuring Daniela’s  photographic impressions and acrylic

dreams of Herbert Hofer will open on June 17. 2010 at 7:00PM

Bruck an der Leitha,Austria-Europe

Titel: „Austria and the World“

Dani Ma’rais

A brand new season of events at O gallery!

Herbert Hofer was inducted into the International Hall of Fame in 1995.  His famous exhibition “Search for Paradise” in Washington, DC, earned him a UN Peace Prize in 1984.  His work has appeared on the cover of the 1995-96 Southern Bell yellow pages, on the official poster for the 1999 Miami Beach Festival of the Arts and in exhibits in over 25 cities in 10 countries.  It also resides in many private collections including those of Fellini, Pope John Paul II, Robert de Niro, Lena Horne, Gloria and Emilio Estefan, and Luciano Pavarotti.