Without a doubt Knox Martin’s brilliantly beautiful B/W paintings, further ripened with the years and replenished with steadier, fabulous wisdom, has arrived at a point of what is generally known as the crowning moment of glory in the artist’s career as well as for humanity, since Knox is the greatest artistic genius since Jan Van Eyck!
I do now look at Knox Martin differently as distinguished from the Knox I have known for 30 some years. By even a fleeting regard upon the wondrous stuffs on the Woodward Gallery catalog, I am already fully aware of the kind of revelation and promise that is in store for the fantastic feasting of my eyes!
It was like,…–Oh my god! And, zoom,…Lo! the familiar memory of the man is no more, somewhat like,… Hey! that is somewhat like the mapping of the course of an electron at flight, one that leaps to the beyond,– with speed of infinite immediacy!
So let the celebration begin, and the music, and the wine freely flow!
Some may not be able to dance now because they are completely blind, but I doubt not that this supreme festive mood can penetrate and infest even the heaviest Venetian blind of the spirit! Remember: you were not supposed to be blind. Recall yourself being a fetus still in your mother’s womb. Recall that spirit in case you want to resume that precious gift of seeing again. No one is born as an impure spirit,–not even the worst criminal of our time, such as Hitler or bin Laden. It is your own thinking ( automatic and usually chaotic activities of the mind ) that has betrayed you,– and all of us. Your thinking,–and nothing else. Have I not made myself clear enough?
Certainly no one can accuse the Alpha Seer of not seeing what is profanely hidden to the Joes, Jacks, and Jills,– of unenlightened spirits!
This is the Golden Age of Art, if only one can perceive the forces unseen by the casual,– general stock of humanity,– this show at the Woodward Gallery, ladies and gentlemen, will mark a supremely important moment in history,– that is, the unsurpassed glory being remarkably registered and fondly documented herein this brief statement, that of a singular peak being climbed, and what formerly impossible obstacles,– now nonchalantly dismissed by the supreme force of one giant and genius!
And, man, limping and hopping along in his ape-ly aspects, pitifully slumbering off since the death of deKooning, may once again proclaim his seat at the Council of the gods, in the partnership at the realm of Beauty!
************************************************************************************************************************
And to see the 87 Year old master beating a lawyer at her own games one day with what can be easily an overpowering round of words,– is itself a delight beyond words!
Frida Kahlo? Did she say she was an admirer of Frida? Ha, ha, ….! Did she also mention that Kahlo was to her,– more than just a name,– or maybe even some sort of heroine,–or an otherworldly, ghostly or UFO influence in the imagination of an idling and fanciful mind?
What an illiterate this!
One year at MCAD ( The Alpha Seer was an MFA candidate there,–BIG MISTAKE!!!!) I had a certain Professor Patricia B, one who had proudly claimed to her class, with the intention to impress certain minds un-hinged and without anchor,–and in all certainty, hearts that were hardly enlightened, –that she had her dissertation of 300+ pages and so forth,– written on the subject of one Henri Matisse and so on,– can you believe that… and Henri Matisse being her main man in the dissertation,…!? Frankly, that meant a lot to someone like the Alpha Seer,–so touching, –you bet! Yet, lo and behold: no sooner had those words taken shape and solidified in the Alpha Seer’s ear-drum than she made a full 180 degrees turn-around, went on to exclaim anyway, with various gesticulations of sighs and admiration every now and then, punctuating what I would report as mundane academic theatricals, to finally arrive at her unabashed proclamation,– that “Mark Rothko” was “her god!” Had you been a witness on that infamous scene, you would have been bound to report that Professor Patricia B. had stopped the Alpha Seer dead in his track, the poor guy having been struck senseless, with no heart beat in evidence,– by so much of a deadpan in the erratic behavior, coming from a supposedly resourceful professor, –and one who had claimed to be a teacher of art too!
Is she a habitual liar/offender being caught often in the petty crime of making the comparison of the legs of a mosquito to a living and bouncing whole elephant, so as to usurp and consolidate that authority of professorship, especially when no one is seriously looking,– and expect to get away with impunity,–or is she simply a total idiot believing that everyone else in the whole wide world should be as dumb as her?
With due reference to the terrorists of our time, such folks as Patricia B, Ph.D. and our lawyer lady, the admirer of Frida Kahlo, remember?–Â can just as easily blow us away!