THE GREAT MASTER KNOX MARTIN ON MASTER BEN LAU, A.K.A. THE ALPHA SEER The Great Master (knoxmartin)In Praise of the Alpha Seer, a.k.a Master Ben Lau Master Knox Martin says: Shortly after teaching at the Yale Graduate School—I left because of interim politics—I find myself teaching at the Art Students League, my alma mater, with hilarity in kiddo plangent ricochets. Meeting with an extraordinary cross-section of so-called artists, painters, sculptors, poets, and people like others. Seeing a thousand people, gigs at other universities and schools—I meet Mr. Ben Lau at the Art Students League—sort of like James Joyce meeting Svevo-—in his classroom, reading his effort and proclaiming “Sir, you are a genius”—I let fall this intelligence on Ben. I have said of Ben, “If you fell off a ladder—and your brush hit the wall—it would be beautiful.”What gives me the status, position, altitude to make such a hootsy-cootchy? Same thing what gives James Joyce clang—perfect pitch. That’s me, which makes me the ultimate cigarro. It’s as it is, does Ben get this? Some of it, part of it, all of its stuff? Or does he take this to Ben’s domain—tee hee! Now, Ben picks up my notion of alpha art, and takes off on the Alpha Seer puts that all into true art blog and creates a miracle, some of it pure Ben Lau, the rest is sweet truth. In several Titian paintings the surface subject matter repeatedly GIVES the message that you could not look upon truth with impunity, to look upon truth all mechanical things would vanish! This is what I see as the working basics of this book, a two edged sword cutting both ways and being wounded at the same time in a highflying clearing cutting a swath. Hopefully, not like a bull in a china closet, but nailed down to specifics, which is the way of the Alpha Seer book. The Alpha seer burns with intelligence to torch the doldrums of the insipid, the laughter out of fear, herd consumption, leaders, dead fashion, architects of rewards to no talent. Yes, no talent is rewarded big time very fast and full so that the vested interests won’t be threatened in their life times(we don’t want any thing around we can’t see) a-a-a-a-all is the same every thing is art, we can now live the life of an artist. Tee hee, falderol. Bruce Nauman displays a film on digging a fence post hole on his property and says “this is art:”— The position of the won’t be taken in, the Alpha Seer is, nothing that Nauman has ever done is art! Renoir said of Cézanne,“Man, he can’t put down but three strokes, and it’s good”—good for what? Aye—there’s the rub. Can it be, can it be, can it really be that what is truly really essential in art be so rare as to be done by us so very few in the face of an ocean of art that comes out of the world from the universities from the academies from the rafters from the streets, it rains so-called artists, the Turners,Monet, Pissarro, the German Expressionists, the futurists, the ash can school— Luks, Sloan, Bellows, Glackens,Whistler, Sir Joshua Reynolds, South American art, all Latino art, modern Japanese, modern Chinese, Russian, American art,Mark Rothko, Clifford Still, Ad Reinhardt, Gottlieb, Hans Hoffman, Jackson Pollock— There’s an immense sheet of wonderful people who are not doing the central fire of art the same way that all the rest on the list are not doing. Francis Bacon, Turner, Damien Hirst may feed us to the domains of non-monkey Cocco, the place where reside—all those that promote only harmless novelty and creatures from the id and dread pool the drively unconscious as a Francis Bacon painting a man on the toilet masturbating with throat cut, lousy mealy colored and dead brushstrokes. Of course this is button pushing supreme—if your buttons are pushed you don’t have to inspect the work! All that bonafidely moves in the ultimate creation, where creation is the subject matter— which is anathema to what obscures, attempts to remove all traces of whatever points to the real thing. Mephistopheles and a foul henchman while out on a walk spot a man who has picked up something in his hands glowing with a preternatural grace, and he radiates enlightenment! The devil’s companion asks his master, “What is that?” Answer—“He has found truth”.””Well hell, isn’t that bad for you?”“No” says Devil, “I will help him to organize it.” Would it be helpful to see a partial list of those condemned on account of the subject matter of their work is creation? Okay!—it’s Titian, Velasquez, Adrien Brouwer, Franz Hals, Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso, de Kooning and us chickens. “On the smithy of my soul I go to create the yet not created consciousness of my race.”—James Joyce As with the real stuff, which I have not included here—ya gots ta read into the warp and weft of the above and with rare intelligence come to grips with what it is posited here.Who knows, Ben Lau’s book The Alpha Seer will save the world. —KNOX MARTIN
Posted on: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 09:18:49 +0000
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