new crush: gustave courbet

he's pretty good looking, right? the bohemian artist crush?

friday night i met s after work, the plan being to head up to the guggenheim to see the cai guo qiang show that i am desperate to see. but when we walked up to the museum, the line stretched out the door and down the block, and i just didn't want to peer past ten pairs of shoulders, even if i was paying what i wanted. being in the neighborhood and the proud owners of memberships (thanks again, mom) we decided to spend the evening in the met. they've got two really fantastic and different shows right now. we started with the gustave courbet show, a remarkable collection of paintings. we'd spoken briefly about courbet in my college survey courses (which tend to hit the "big points"), and we talked mainly about his social paintings, depicting the peasant classes in his hometown, never before the subject of serious paintings of great beauty (if included in art, they were idealized or background characters, which is what made realist scenes like the burial at ornans so shocking and spectacular.) so what i didn't know is how prolific courbet was, at realist scenes, portraits of friends and family, nudes, land and seascapes, images of the hunt, and my favorite, self-portraits. courbet was pretty handsome (hence the crush), but what i really loved about the portraits is that he liked to paint himself in character.

the desperate man has been incorporated into the show's logo, and stares you down as you enter. his eyes are mesmerizing (i promise the internet does this no justice), and while he looks crazed, he also radiates with purpose, a desperate man on a mission.

i also really liked the wounded man (i mean, he's an old-hollywood heartthrob, am i right?) this originally included a sleeping woman, and no wound, but when he broke up with then-girlfriend virginie, she got painted out of the picture and he shot himself with crimson paint. (ladies have never had an easy time in the art world.) aside from my new crush, it was a really interesting show, and i felt i developed a new appreciation for an artist i mainly knew from a throw-away joke in picasso at the lapin agile.

we followed courbet with the jasper johns: gray show, which was really beautiful and powerful in its simplicity. johns, a prolific artist fond of exploring the repetition of familiar images and motifs seen in new ways, is particularly interested in the color (or lack of?) gray, and this exhibit is full of paintings, assemblages and prints in the monotone. it's actually much more visually arresting than it might sounds, especially because johns is a master of so many different art-making techniques (i was particularly wowed by his prints on plastic--they have a really incredible translucency to them) and employs a variety of patterns and images. i think s was less impressed by johns (he really liked the courbets), but i was in modern art heaven.

post-museum, we headed down to e 6th street for some indian food. when i went to london a few years ago, we went to the east end for dinner one night (london's curry capital.) it was the only place where i have ever walked down the street as people tried, one after the other, to lure me into their restaurant. s had never experienced this before, so 6th st and its hawkers caught him a little off-guard. we got ambushed into one restaurant, and narrowly escaped with our lives when i realized it wasn't the one we wanted (seriously, they chased me shouting "miss! miss! this table!" as i ran for the door, politely refusing all the way) before finding some delicious food, chewed to the dulcet tones of a sitar player one table away.

saturday was our lazy day (s paid his taxes, i did crossword puzzles in the sunshine from the window) until we decided to go out with our roommates to union hall last night. have i written of my love for union hall? it's what i imagine a turn-of the century men's club to look like, with red velvet sofas and bookshelves to the ceiling, indoor bocce ball courts and painted portraits of shriners on the walls. we put ourselves on the list to play, but bocce is quite popular with park slope hip kids, and i was content just to watch. there was burlesque in the basement last night, but we stayed upstairs to talk and drink and talk some more. union hall feels cozy, like you're hanging out at the apartment of your coolest uncle. we went out early, and got home in time for me to go to bed and wake up ready to head to work this morning. it's about as perfect as a saturday gets, i think.