great stuff!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3380991791665837177&q=courbet&total=312&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

I think it is great to take a new view on viewing art!

Buddha Sculpture

does anyone see a resemblance to a famous figure in this sculpture? email me answer--- I am very curious if others see what alex sees.

courbet at the met--by gardega

The Courbet show blew my mind wide open. I am letting it settle before I comment on it.

picasso---man with lollipop

Here is a very strange Picasso painting in The Met. It is called man with lollipop. it is so strange I am not sure what I think of it as I generally dont like this part of Picasso's art.

feet of the met---by gardega

Can anyone name these feet?

feet of the met---by gardega

feet of the met---by gardega

feet from the met--by gardega

met photos---by gardega

There is a great statue of Perseus in the met with Medusa's severed head. What a work of art!!!

the met--first to arrive

I was the first person to arrive at The Met this morning as I got there an hour early to make sure I was the first person in to see the Courbet show today. I even had ample time to take photos in Central park. The man behind me and second in line (an artist) and I got into a discussion and I made a a quip about the contrast of having both jasper Johns and Courbet shows at the same time. Turns out that he was a big fan of jasper Johns and thought Dali a third rate hack. I mentioned to him that Jasper Johns was a terrible draftsman and Dali was the greater draftsman than even Picasso and that Jasper Johns could not draw.. He said he "lettered well." I replied that sign shops also letter rather well. He knew that it was game over at that point and I pointed out that what makes the world great is each person is entitled to their own opinion. Gardega was glad he was first on line and not second as I scurried away from idiocy and into the great halls of genius.

springtime---- by gardega

Alex is weak on horticulture/botany and cannot tell you what flower I photographed here. Can anyone name this tree/ flower? There are some areas I am poorly versed in and that would be botany and patience.

alice in wonderland bronze--NYC

Here is a sculpture that I once had to paint for a book illustration. it is the famous Bronze in Central Park in the east 70's. I like this sculpture a lot because it is not artsy fartsy bologna concerned with the form of the form of the reality of the space..... but rather a simple and nice piece of work.

Pet Photography---by Gardega

I found this "living mop" in Central Park. The owner told me the name but Mop will suffice in my mind. This is the most surrealistic of all dogs, methinks. I have a strange suspicion this dog prefers winter over spring and summer.

Central Park---by gardega

I took some photos in Central Park before I ventured into the Met today. This is Cleopatra's Needle, a bit of Egypt in NYC.

The Met

I am going to The Met today. I will be the first person inside as they open at 9:30 and I am getting ready now at 7:00. I will take photos and maybe some drawings as well.

also at the MET--jasper Johns--TA DA!!!

I am sorry if any of you are Jasper John's fans as I am picking on him because he also has a show at The Met. This piece is called hart crane (persicope) --I have learned that if you are painting "Modern art" and your painting has no real merit to it (visual or otherwise) you can throw a random title on it to make it seem like it is more than it seems---like you are "in the know." Courbet's painting of a Desperate Man takes labor and skill and love and thought and sweat. these paintings take a can of cheap acrylic paint. I have also noticed the greater the con game in the art world--the greater amount of words you need to describe a piece of art or an artist. This is the opposite of ZEN, alex thinks---just sitting, painting.

yesterday

It was warm and sunny yesterday in NYC. I hid from my work and walked around the city. I am afraid to check my messages. It was my first day off in two months and I felt like I was getting warped like an old piece of wood. I had trouble adjusting to ignoring my phone but if they cant take a joke they should lose my number.

viva gardega

Courbet at The Met

Here is a painting by Courbet that is being used to advertise his show at The Met. I am going to see his show on Sunday. I am not working--I am going to Met. This painting is called "The Desperate Man." I would change title to "the artist known as Alex" or "deadlines." or "I have to make six glass pieces by when????" I own a journal of Courbets (not an original) but a published journal.

here is something I stole from the Mets website....

Gustave Courbet (1819–1877), the self-proclaimed "proudest and most arrogant man in France," created a sensation at the Salon of 1850–51 when he exhibited a group of paintings set in his native Ornans, a village in eastern France. These works challenged convention by rendering scenes from daily life in an emphatically realistic style and on the large scale previously reserved for history painting.

Courbet's career was punctuated by a succession of scandals, which were usually cultivated by the artist and always welcomed. After a public fight with the all-powerful superintendent of fine arts, Comte Nieuwerkerke, several of his works were refused display in the great Salon and Universal Exposition of 1855. Courbet countered with his own Pavilion of Realism, audaciously built within sight of the official Salon, where he exhibited, among other works, a monumental canvas, The Painter's Studio (Musée d'Orsay, Paris). The accompanying exhibition catalogue included his "Realist Manifesto," in which he declared his aim "to be in a position to translate the customs, the ideas, the appearance of my epoch, according to my own estimation." The press had a field day, and Courbet immediately became the most controversial artist in France.

A new generation of painters, among them Manet, Monet, Fantin-Latour, Degas, and Whistler, were drawn to Courbet's outsize personality and his realism. As a painter of landscapes, he developed a radical vision, expressed in tightly focused views of his native Franche-Comté as well as his "landscapes of the sea," which profoundly influenced the next generation of artists, especially Cézanne.

In 1870, he rejected the coveted award of the Legion of Honor, proclaiming his freedom and independence from any form of government. His involvement with the short-lived, socialist government, the Paris Commune of 1871, led to imprisonment and, ultimately, self-imposed exile in Switzerland, where he died in 1877. Through his powerful and idiosyncratic realism and his courtship of the press and controversy, Courbet became a pioneering figure in the history of modern art. His paintings, which moved Picasso,

quote of the day

"money can't buy you happiness but it can buy you a yacht and you can pull right up along side it"
david lee roth

Almost out of my deadline mess and will take sunday off to go to The Met. I think there is a Courbet show there, does anyone know? I am looking forward to a day of nothing except art and wine without some deadline on my shoulders. I was going to say art, women and wine but the only thing that is for sure is that if you have some money in your pocket you can have some art and some wine. I guess if you are a governor you can pay for women as well...I guess money can get you what you need sometimes but it can also steal your soul out from under you if you get obsessed with the stuff.

nyc and the sofa of time

In order to survive as an artist in NYC, one must be psychotically driven. It occurred to me that I have the psychotic part down but the whole driven thing sounds like a lot of work. However, since I have gotten got rid of my television I find lots of time I never knew I had. It is not unlike finding change in an old sofa.

words of the day----N.peart

We can rise and fall like empires
Flow in and out like the tide
Be vain and smart, humble and dumb
We can hit and miss like pride
Just like pride

We can circle around like hurricanes
Dance and dream like lovers
Attack the day like birds of prey
Or scavengers under cover

[Chorus:]
Look in...to the eye of the storm
Look out...for the force without form
Look around...at the sight and the sound
Look in look out look around...

We can move with savage grace
To the rhythms of the night
Cool and remote like dancing girls
In the heat of the beat and the lights

We can wear the rose of romance
An air of joie de vivre
Too tender hearts upon our sleeves
Or skin as thick as thieves
Thick as thieves...

thought of the day---gnomic thoughts

I have been waking up lately with thoughts that are half-dreams, half conceptual problems. It is very hard to explain but this morning I awoke with this idea in mind--- If nature uses a gnomic spirals to create things (sunflowers, nautilus shells, DNA, pine cones, leaf growth etc) Then perhaps thought or creative thought has similar properties. Maybe we create and think in rhythmic spirals. Maybe there is mathematical structure behind the outhouse of our emotional and creative thoughts. Perhaps we dont think in a linear fashion but in a spiral fashion.

Here is a bad photograph of my glass side panels for the stairs. The design of these pieces is art nouveau inspired.

long day

I worked from 2:30 AM until 10 PM but have very little to show for my labor...

another set

Here are the final two glass women I made for my commission. Again they are not lit yet and need to be switched.