FrankGaard.org

My mother was my first teacher and in most ways my best. She grew up on a farm in the upper penisula of Michigan during the Depression in a community that spoke mostly Finnish. Finnish is a language that is very difficult almost an Asian language. The Finns came to Northern Europe from Mongolia. I recall my drunken father calling my Mom a Mongolian when they fought (she called him a draft dodger, he'd spend most of the war in Trinidad drinking rum and unloading cargo). I wondered if I was a Chinaman?

Freud helped me understand that death had some positive aspects. Of course like life insurance you don't get the pay off. So we have this short life or sweet spot where we do our art, til arthritis do us part. To be square I'm an artist who paints, draws and writes. Not the mere painter I once was. Though I love so color much I can't really join the Duchamp gang as anti-retinal philosophy. It's akin to Jackson Pollock's muted natural colors , it is a ways to rein in color by keeping to the earth colors greys and blues. It is like a readymade harmony which you could almost put in a bottle.

Philippe Vergne in NYTimes today brilliant and practical.

 A friend of mine who had stored a bunch of my student art in Chicago moved to New York and threw this work in a dumpster. I didn't mind this as it was work that wasn't relevant anymore but it does remind us that art can have a less than lovely destiny at the landfill. I've heard many artists lament the destiny of their art; that the art is destined to the dumpster. I mean people do give up and get rid of the stuff they made. I've saved alot with some just giving way to life's destructive realities. I start my professional career in 1967 which means I've been active for 47 years.

We have a point in our childhood when we start to have sexual feelings even desires. It makes baseball seem so childish compared to skirt chasing. I was in a high school art's program left over from the Smith-Hughes Act a war time measure to help vets with high school by making high school more like trade school. So it was very diverse group very geeky in a school with 5000 boys and no girls. My old Artpolice pal Andy used to always insist that the gay population was 10% although when I got to art school I was convinced the ratio was wrong.

How Joseph Beuys ex-Hitler Youth stole my blackboard and sold it for a million dollars.The artschool could have used the million dollars but they didn't even get to dip their beak in this sale , Beuys business practices were very Tuetonic {SP>?} German.The  Arab guy at the Dairy Store says Frank what nationality are you? I say my father was born in Norway and he says You're German . This is the Arab view.

October 27, 2009 - I was thinking about several things, what is it about rich artists that makes me puke? It's the financing. Sigmar Polke has a lot of financing, his work looks rich and fancy. Same for Damien Hirst and his diamonds. The business of art is very much a business of the swells, the very folks who 2 centuries back would have been butchered by the rabble of Paris. Wealth comes in degrees not everyone rich is  as rich.

Saw the new Keats movie really seemed like the Fanny movie but that's Jane Campion always giving the woman's viewpoint.Point here being the necessity of language skills for visual artists.After years of studying Nietzsche I found poetry. I remember thinking it had an economy that escaped most art forms. As well poetry seemed to speak to many of the same issues as philosophy and art. The Keats film is heavy on the relationship with Fanny and the vicissitudes of romance in the 19th century.

Cool here in the TC, not a peep from anybody. at 5 today the Twins play the Yankees in neu Yankee Stadium. The Twins lost the 1st game tired from no sleep after beating the Tigers for the Central Championship and a chance to get beaten bad. Oh Woe to our club amidst the towers of performance enhanced champions from Gotham. Years ago say early 1970's I was taken in by Kabbalistic numerology (Numeria/?)Anyway baseball has all these numeralogical tendancies - fans become addicted to stats.