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FIGURE 1: Â Â DOMESTIC DISPUTE BY THE ALPHA SEER FORMERLY KNOWN AS BEN LAU
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(HOW SHOULD AN ART STUDENT LOOK AT ART) A true Painting must be teeming with LIFE, in contrast to illustration, which is anything but ART! There is truly nothing in an illustration other than platitude and entropy! Look at a Norman Rockwell,–then turn your gaze to a Titian masterpiece,–you tell us the difference! Or you can read Harry Potter (illustration for children) Vs. Shakespeare (Art for the mature adults!) You can listen to the pop music at first and then tune to Mozart or Beethoven later. Again, you tell us the difference! It is therefore pertinent for an art student to detect that irreconcilable difference by means of careful comparison at the start. Comparing Ben Lau’s work with those of the others on this website will definitely clarify this 21st Century mess at hand;– namely, that Beauty cannot be expressed through ideas (or concepts)! The reason for it is quite simple: the other “artists” on exhibition here are, in fact, art students who have not attained yet! Ben Lau, by contrast, is a MASTER of Painting! That can be readily verified through careful study of Ben’s compositions. It may be further confirmed by the Knox Martin comment about Ben Lau on http://benlauart.com, as well as his praise for the Alpha Seer ( a.k.a. Ben Lau,) in an essay on http://thealphaseer.com. As an art student, you have the obligation to find out about all this. You are obliged, not just to yourself, but also to Humanity, to do so! Nothing should be embraced as truth through belief and hearsay. You have an obligation to always see it for yourself! It is O.K. to be skeptical at first, then you must take up the offer by making investigation, in order to achieve conviction. CONVICTION,– not belief,– is a divine gift in life, as a shaft of inner light has been gained to guide you in all actions from now on. Enlightenment has a dawning effect on the human spirit, but one must make a good effort towards that. Conceptual experiments inevitably leads to a complete breakdown in Art.The history of Pop art, Conceptualism and Postmodernism has given us sufficient proof for that. It is the story of spiritual bankruptcy! Who except a stupid and unenlightened crowd would still insist on visiting the Walker Art Centers of the world, the Gugganheims of the world, the Whitneys of the world,– or even the Museums of Modern Art of the world, where conceptual bombardments, extremely boring,mundane and fake stuffs are shown there,–ideas are packaged and sold as Art en mass to a crowd heavy with herd instincts! The blind leading the blind is the name of the game! Beauty must express itself through the creator’s sublime nature, more commonly known as “artistic genius”, where supreme artistic intuition born of Nature is in reign! Only Nature can instruct the artistic genius. Little wonder why Matisse says, “Art cannot be taught!” On the other hand, the everymen, better known as the Pop artists or Postmodern artists, or Conceptualists, do not have the talent to produce art. Who are those people in the last 500 years of painting? They are Caravaggio, Andy Warhol, Chuck Close, Rauschenberg, Edvard Munch, Gustav Klimt, Marchel Duchamp, Kahlo, Bacon,Lichtenstein, Albers, Hofmann, Newman, Beckmann, Nolde, Pollock, Matta, Still, Rivera, Ernst, Tanguy, Dali, Kokoschka, Magritte, Hopper, O’Keeffe, Leger, Klee, Braque, Kirchner, Modigliani, Chirico, Marc, Schiele, Malevich, Derain, Kandinsky, Klimt, Gauguin, Monet, Cassatt, Sargent, Pissarro, Sisley, Whistler, Homer, Courbet, Delacroix, Hiroshige, Gericault, Turner, Constable, Gainsborough, Boucher, Rothko, Stella, Hockney, Johns, Hirst, Freud, Hawkins, Motherwell, Dine, etc., etc. and etc. These folks simply do not have the talent to produce art for the following reasons: 1. they do not have the sublime intuition born of Nature for art; and 2. with that important intuition missing, they can only behave like the blind, being incapable of seeing or understanding Art. The guiding INNER LIGHT for the understanding or seeing of Art is amiss! Some of the folks listed above may be a hero to many, some may be extremely popular owing to their nationality or gender ( Munch, O’Keef); some may have become famous for their inventiveness of things (Pollock,)– nevertheless, we should know full well that, without artistic genius, they cannot call themselves masters of Painting,– no matter who they were, or what they had done.
The Alpha Seer |
