"He has made of it ....
...a dream not quite real in it's mortar and stone but authentic in spirit, more Toledo than Toledo itself." - -George Kent on El Greco's View of Toledo
El Greco is at the Met. Holy Fuck. I'm sure that, unless perhaps you are Karen or Solomon, you do not understand how big this is.
I love this man. He painted how I want to paint. I just painted a 3 foot tall painting in oils with him as my main insperation. I wrote my college essays about him. I read about him and look at his paintings online in my spare time (I'm a dork. Get over it. I'm a dork with a passion, and if you don't like it, you can fuck yourself :). I've only seen one of his paintings in life- its tucked in a really obscure corner of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. And the biggest collection in 20 years is on exhibit in New York Who knows when the next one will be? I mean, I'm sure I'll see his pieces around, but odds are that they will be scattered, and who knows where some will wind up? Plus, it as View of Toledo, which is....my favorite piece in existance. I am going to see that piece, period. And, I am seeing it this Saturday no matter what, because that is the last day of the exhibit. Apparently, it's been up since October, and I didn't know until Solomon told me this morning (have I mentioned that I LOVE that woman?!). I AM seeing this- I'm not letting what happened with the Dega exhibit happen, if I have to wait for hours, so be it (my dad and I went, but didn't buy advanced tickets, so we would have had to wait 3 hours- we just toured the rest of the museum instead. Only this was an EXTREMELY significant show- had tons of his works gathered together, and they were supposedly scattered all over the place. Newspaper write-ups, Doc talking about it, so on. And I missed it. ) I cannot believe my mother. I informed her of this (that Im going to NY Saturday and she can't stop me) and she goes "Oh, I told you about that. Aunt Jill offered to take you, and you didn't want to go, remember?" I kinda freaked out at her. (I would bear that woman I hate to see the exhibit; I would have gone even if my mouth hurt; even if it meant missing the VCU deadline- I mean, there is little that I wouldn't skip for it. Hell, I would have missed the Placebo concert THE FIRST TIME, this is how much this means to me. There is no way in HELL she told me, and I might have missed it. But I didn't, so I'll forgive her, even though she is driving me crazy by insisting that she did tell me (mother, just no. NO. Give it up.)
* It's hard to say exactly why I love his work so much. Its just so damn original, so intense- I've never seen someone capture so much turbulence in his paintings- not even paintings with the subjects of rape and murder and poverty compare to one of his landscapes. "He painted his subjects fairly realisticly, but stretched, distorted, twisted-- as if they contained the real world in a highly concentrated form" (me from my crappy essay.) Plus, ya know, he sassed Michelangelo, which amuses me greatly.
DOCS BACK! YAY! It's amazing how well I had forgotten how much I missed him until he came back. You could tell that he was glad to be back too- he was all smiles and jokes. He loved my fish sculpture, thank God, and showed me a kind of glaze that I've never used before for it, which rocks. The ear grid he liked- not as much, but he didn't hate it, which is good. I started messing up though (watercolors while tired doesn't work) but I'll get it. OH, THE RECEPTION! Went very well. It was hot has hell and really crowded, but good. I got some compliments on my piece, which was nice (even though the wings look like easter threw up! lol) Doc was shocked, but all laughs and hugs. I didn't get to talk to him much- just "hi" and "bye"- but I got to see Mr. K, which was spiffy, plus Mrs. Law, and all us AP students (Lauren, Brian, Eric, Jeff, Jonathan, Dan- you all rock for showing up! The rest of you- SMACK! gol) . The work some people did was *amazing*- my favorites were Kimi Kaplowitz' Self portrait (REALLY intense- she looks almost like the evil woman in The Emperors New Groove!) and another piece, I don't know the artist, that was done completely in bright crazy colors (the way people look under bright colored lights at concerts and such). Tons of good work, though.
Ugh. Livejournals are way too good at distracting me. Tons of homework to do, so adios.
-me