“The Foxes Beat the Hounds”

In 2023, I was a resident of the Marea Art Project in Praiano. During my stay, I focused my research on Vali Myers (1930–2003), an eclectic Australian artist who for decades lived in a rural house near Positano. By meeting people who knew her, visiting her home, and exploring the archives that preserve her memory, I decided to focus on the institutional history of her presence in Costiera during the 1950s and 1960s. Through examining her interactions with institutions—chronicled in documents, newspapers, and her diaries—a compelling narrative emerges about the region and its relationship with nonconformist creativity.

This research wouldn’t have been possible without the support of the Marea Art Project and its fantastic founders, Imma Tralli and Roberto Pontecorvo. Through them, I got in touch with Daniele Esposito. He generously shared materials from his invaluable archive on the history of Positano. After Daniele, it was the turn of Gianni Menichetti, Vali’s second partner. Gianni opened the gates of their nest to us, which he still guards, and gifted us his memories—I cannot thank him enough. As he recalled in his memoir, “Vali had no real sense of time and rarely remembered such trivialities as dates and names”. Therefore, reconstructing her story is difficult but urgent, and the only way to do it is by listening to the many people who knew her. At the end of my residency, a public screening of the 1965 documentary The Witch of Positano evolved into an experiment in collective historiography. There, I listened to the stories and memories of the people of Positano and Praiano. It was an exercise in method that I hope to reflect, at least in part, in this text.

Dancer, artist, and writer Vali Myers (Sidney, 1930–Melbourne, 2003) holds quite an underground fame. Her feature in Ed Van der Elsken’s legendary photobook Love on the Left Bank and her fabled nights at the Chelsea Hotel ensured her a die-hard reputation. Less is known about her years in Positano, her residence of choice in a wild and remote spot in a renowned Italian tourist destination. Her boisterous presence, supported by locals and opposed by right-wing politics and law enforcement, sheds light on the political and social significance of the presence of nonconforming creatives in tourist contexts. In this time of mass tourism and regulatory policies, the story of her welcome in Positano from the 1950s onward tells of a different and anti-stereotypical Italy, capable of foresightly perceiving the value of encountering and hosting difference.

An Australian of Irish heritage, Vali first came to Positano from Vienna in 1952 with Mati Klarwein and Mia Löblich. Back in Austria, she met the young architect Rudi Rappold. In 1953, after a period in Paris that brought her closer to Lettrist circles and allowed her to encounter Jean Cocteau and Jean Genet, Vali returned to Positano with Rudi. The following year, the couple found what would become their home: a small 18th-century pavilion at the far end of Vallone Porto, a canyon carved into the rock just South of Positano, hidden by a dense forest. Initially, it was conceived as a temporary haven.  In 1954, Vali returned to Paris and survived her “opium years.” In this period she realized her disturbing Nigredo Drawings, which would later appear in The Paris Review. In 1955, she married Rudi. The following year Love on the Left Bank appeared, securing Vali’s long-lasting fame as a bohémienne muse. In 1958, trying to escape Paris, Vali and Rudi permanently moved to Positano. Their relocation was facilitated by Count Hugo Schönbord and the legendary Marquis Paolo Sersale. A nobleman, hotel owner, and communist, Sersale was the village’s mayor. More than anyone else, he understood that Positano’s secret was its hard-to-reach geography. Over the years, thanks to its secrecy, it had become—just like Capri or Taormina—an ideal refuge for artists, creatives, and queer people. Rudol’f Nureev, Gilbert Clavel, Léonide Massine, Donald Downes, William Congdon, Goliarda Sapienza, Franco Zeffirelli, and Gore Vidal were all connected to that area of the Costiera. Despite its growing popularity, the mayor, with the support of the people of Positano, did all he could to keep the village hard to reach, authentic, and attractive to artists and intellectuals. 

The early years of Vali and Rudi in Positano flowed quietly. Vali stood out in the village but integrated easily. During their nights at La Buca di Bacco and Le Sirenuse, she and Rudi became friends with Captain Vito Rispoli, carpenter Mastro Peppe, Don Vito Attanasio, musician Alfonso Lampo di Gennaro and Luigi “della Cambusa”. On summer evenings, Vali would go dancing at one of the clubs overlooking the sea that would mark the history of the Costiera: “Vali would go to the Africana at night. She used to walk the entire way with Rudi, about seven kilometers, dance all night long, and then come back on foot at dawn.”

Despite their good welcome in Positano, word of their presence immediately began to circulate. As early as July 1958, the weekly news magazine L’Europeo devoted a double-page spread to Vali, titled The Ghost of Positano. It included four photographs, one of her drawings, and a short text: “‘The cat,’ ‘the owl,’ ‘the specter,’ or, more simply, ‘the madwoman’: these are the nicknames that the young Australian painter Valeria Rappold married Myers [sic] collected during her stay in Positano. Her long red hair, disheveled from long ago, exposes her as the extreme survivor of the existentialist storm that raged in the boîtes of Paris. Valeria made her first experiments in the postwar French capital: she danced, drew and sent long shivers down the backs of tourists, showing up among the tables in her favorite hairstyle: flame hair abandoned on her shoulders in the wild and her face completely painted white. She first came to Positano three years ago. She met an architect, Rudy Myers, her compatriot: they got married, and from that day Valeria enriched her maquillage by painting her dark circles every morning with lampblack; thus, she took on that owl-like appearance that to the eyes of the Positanese recalls an idea of evil eye and tragedy. ‘But The Owl’—protests Valeria imperturbably—‘is the symbol of life and I don’t understand why it makes such an impression.’” [1] 

In 1962, the lease on the house at the Vallone Porto that Sersale had granted them expired. As Rudi recalled, “Sersale did not want us to pay even that modest sum of five hundred liras per month. He jokingly said that the municipality would have to pay us something because by staying in Positano, we represented a new tourist attraction.” [2] The new mayor did not think like that, he decided not to renew the lease, and a long legal battle began. Umberto Fragola, a university professor and the first president of the local tourist company, took their side. Somehow, they managed to stay in their home. In 1965, experimental filmmakers Sheldon and Diane Rochlin, famous for their work with The Living Theatre, reached them to film the documentary Vali. The Witch of Positano. This bold and intimate portrait of  “the acid-age Heidi”—as Vali was defined by critics at the San Francisco Film Festival—constitutes a unique record of her daily life in Positano. It won the Mannheim festival, was screened all over the world, and was praised by Bernardo Bertolucci and Andy Warhol.

In Italy, a country just beginning to discover hippies and countercultural youth movements, Rudi and Vali became the symbol of an alternative, fringe existence. It is no coincidence that only the communist newspaper L’Unità attacked the film at its first showing in Florence. Somehow glamorous and not rebellious enough, Vali and Rudi posed a threat not only to the reactionary values of the bourgeoisie but also to the mindset of the institutional left: “Vali and Rudi may raise cats, a fox, and a donkey, but they live in a white cottage among the trees that many would envy and are sufficiently motorized to reach nearby towns and the living rooms of their snobbish friends if necessary. Sheldon Rochlin, on the other hand, presents the extravagant couple as models of rebellion against the mechanized and alienated civilization of our time. Rebellion, my foot: although we cannot swear that Vali and Rudi are directly funded by the local tourist boards, their exhibitionist behavior, portrayed by the director with a great copy of photographic and color effects, authorizes the worst assumptions.” [3] 

Due to the film, Vali became more and more popular: Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull visited her in Positano, and she flew to London to perform at the Royal Albert Hall with Donovan. In May 1965, Vali also earned the cover of the catholic weekly magazine Orizzonti’s special issue on “godless Italy.” Her face, with eyes circled in black and red hair, was accompanied by the yellow caption “Adam and Eve in Positano.” This period of her life is documented by her first visual diary—a striking document that weaves together photographs, quotes, invocations to the Madonna and Salvatore Giuliano, recipes, detailed accounts of her animals’ health, drawings, and her iconic handwriting. Some of its passages shed light on her life and perception: “I like to be out on the road along the coast, going and going. And I turn the men’s eyes, and I want to laugh all over, oh so mocking, and go like a foxy up and away into the valley and the grey rock mountains.” Other passages testify to the difficulties encountered with bureaucracy and the desire to leave, “We, Wu and me are going away with Foxy and all the animals looking for another home. When living gets difficult birds fly away, migrate, foxies go away into the mountains and fish swim away to another part of the sea. That’s how it is for us. We, Wu and me and Foxy and all the animals will head down into Calabria towards North Africa.”

Indeed, in 1966, the new administration of Positano returned to the attack with even greater violence. With her popularity, Vali increasingly threatened traditional values and burgeoning luxury tourism. With the support of Carabinieri and the Salerno central police station, the city council sent the two an eviction order on the pretext that the animals living with them were damaging the Vallone forest. Unexpectedly, this small local affair turned into an international scandal and, more importantly, into a collective response from the people of Positano. Among the first to break the news was the Scottish newspaper The Herald. In March 1966, they wrote, “An Australian woman and her Austrian husband, who call themselves ‘The Original Beatniks,’ have been ordered to leave their mountain shack in Italy.” [4] A couple of weeks later, the national tabloid Oggi published the article Chased out of their paradise the world’s last existentialists, opting for a term inspired by Vali’s period in Paris. The magazine gave an account of the citizens’ support: a lawyer and a university professor defended them for free, while porters raised money to pay their fine. For the first time the issue took on a clear political meaning, touching on a crucial issue for local and Italian history: “Dr. Baldo Fiorentino, a minority city councilor, warned the council of the danger of clouding, with the forcible removal of Rudy and Wally, a shining tradition of hospitality that Positano had won during the 20-year Fascist period by protecting Jews and anti-Nazis.” [5]

Three days later, under the headline “Let’s leave them in peace!” La Tribuna Illustrata also came to the couple’s defense. The popular tabloid interviewed a few Positano residents to show the support of the locals. Tailor Alfonso Cinque, whose father grazed his cattle inside the Vallone, was clear, “Why don’t they let Rudi and Vali have that piece of land? They made their home there, and home is important, sir! Yes, it is important!” Hotelier Vito Attanasio, a former alderman with Sersale, felt the same way, “How can you throw people out of their homes because their donkey is gnawing the trees?” Restaurateur Maria Pisacane was more pragmatic, but she launched an implicit attack, “They could tell them: tidy yourselves up more if you want to walk around the village; but that’s all they should tell them. We should, rather, do some self-examination, the rest of us!” Housewife Maria Fusaro agreed that they should bathe more and dress better but wondered, “Is it our business or theirs?” and then praised Vali, “She is a good dancer, it’s a pleasure to see her dance.” Chef Luigi Barba was equally positive, “Look, on my account, these guys have never hurt anyone; to me, they are ordinary citizens of Positano. They are not murderers; they always paid for the coffee and wine they consumed.” Finally, hotelier Alfonso Attanasio went so far as to call them “the two nicest people in Positano.” He had his reasons, “I used to run a club where they often came. They never caused brawls. If anything, even important personalities came to see them. Then, they wanted to climb up to see their little house and their animals.” 

Transformed into a sort of tourist attraction, Vali and Rudi were the living emblems of Positano’s progressive hospitality. Despite the support of the people of Positano, the battle for their house continued again the following year, turning into a national political case. The prefect of Salerno handed them a waybill, Senator Alfonso Chiariello of the Liberal Party made an appeal for them, journalists Enzo Todaro and Salvatore Maffei took an interest in their case, and the mayor of the Campania town of Montecorvino Rovella offered them a Norman castle to move into. Eventually, the forest department granted them a five-year lease, and the couple remained in their Positano refuge. Vali noted down this victory in one of her diaries, “We’ve won our battle with all the officials and police south of Roma. From February till July, Wu and I never gave a bloody inch. The foxes beat the hounds, this runs 10 days clear, they gave us to leave the whole of Italy with 5 police charges against our name. They got more than they bargained for, and most of all, the wretched mayor of Positano, who began it all. So here we are, and all O.K. and who knows what way the wind will blow, come Autumn.” And later: “Today, May 31st, I went with Baffi in our painted Ape, down to Amalfi, to sign the contract for our kingdom. Our green valley Il Porto. I wore a long black plush skirt with a golden bird in a cage embroidered on it, and a red plush jacket and boots. We are happy. Today after 2 years of war, the valley is all ours. In love and all honour to the Madonna.”

Everything seemed to have worked out for the best, but new threats hung over the couple. Back in March 1967, the weekly tabloid ABC had first associated their case with the hypocritical moral panic caused by the hippie wave: “They were not bothering anyone, but being foreigners and aesthetically unattractive, the ban hit them. For some time now, our authorities have been very sensitive to the length of other people’s hair. We will see what happens this summer when our beaches will be invaded by the followers of the long-hair-international. Knowing our chickens, we can believe that nothing will be undertaken if said tourists have some money to spend in our cities. The ban will come later.” [6] 

That moral panic would grow in the following months and result in one of the most shocking Italian episodes right on the Costiera. At 2 am on August 5, 1970, a massive police commando raided a villa in Praiano known as La Casa degli Angeli (The House of the Angels). Under the pretense of a modest amount of hashish, the Villa’s owner, famous Austrian film actor William Berger, his partner and Living Theatre actress Carol Lobravico, and seven of their friends were arrested and interned for seven months in a criminal asylum. Their guilt was only that of leading a nonconforming lifestyle. Eventually, they were all acquitted and released, except for Lobravico, who had died in the asylum under mysterious circumstances, causing an international scandal and protests. The operation had been ordered by the Salerno Prefecture as part of a more general “nation-wide drug witch hunt” that took place while Italy’s organs of state were experiencing great tensions. The “years of lead” were beginning  and a few months later, the coup d’état that went down in history as the Golpe Borghese was attempted. In those same weeks, police raided Vali and Rudi’s house again. Something seemed to have broken for good in the almost miraculous relationship between that remote corner of Italy and the free and revolutionary experience of that creative couple. 

In the 1970s, a new story began. Vali started to travel more and more to Amsterdam and New York, organizing exhibitions of her works and staying at the Chelsea Hotel—“It’s terrible, I’m lovesick for New York… it’s so doggy… and being foxy it turned me on.” The relationship with Rudi soured and came to a final breakup. Vali continued to live at Vallone together with Gianni Menichetti, a young boy from Siena who had joined her and Rudi in 1971. After publishing a large book devoted to her drawings, Vali died in Australia in 2003. To this day, Gianni is still the guardian of her valley. What changed through the years was not only Vali’s relationship with the Costiera but also the very identity of those places. With the rise of mass and high-luxury tourism, there was less and less room for artists, creatives and non-conforming people. Positano and Praiano gained fame and prosperity but lost their character as small, free creative hubs. The same fate befell many locations in Italy and beyond. Reconstructing these histories, understanding their political dynamics, collecting people’s memories, experiencing those places and attracting new creative minds to them can help rebuild a valuable fabric of social and intellectual exchanges—the real wealth and the only salvation for an Italy increasingly caught in the grip of homogenizing hypertourism.  

[1] “Il fantasma di Positano,” L’Europeo, XIV, 665, 13 July 1958, p. 56-57. Positano, Daniele Esposito’s private collection. 
[2] Salvatore Maffei, “Scacciati dal loro paradiso gli ultimi esistenzialisti del mondo,” Oggi Illustrato, 17 marzo 1966, pp. 66-67. Positano, Daniele Esposito’s private collection. 
[3] “Eremiti con l’automobile per visitare i salotti «snob»,” L’Unità, 17 February 1967. 
[4] A.R. McElwain, “Our Beat Girl told: Beat It! Italians Upset at Zoo,” The Herald, March 4, 1966, p. 5. Vali Myers Gallery Trust.
[5] Maffei, quoted, p. 67.
[6] “Esistenzialisti indesiderabili”, ABC, 27 marzo 1967. Positano, Daniele Esposito’s private collection.