The Alpha Seer understanding true art

Everyone in the world seems to know what art is, but no one can point to a Titian and enunciate to me what exactly makes it great. Let’s face it, when you say you like art, therefore it follows that you know what art is– excuse me–you are just lying flat-face to yourself. It does not bother you at all for this self-deception because art has so insignificant a role to play in your life, and lying about it makes you look, and probably feel good when among your peers!

Art is so difficult a subject that it takes the mind of a genius to fully comprehend it. It would take a master to produce art– from nothing. I hope to put this argument of what art is to rest by pointing this out, by way of dissuading any similar future debate another fool has the audacity to bring along as if he knows what art is already.

The chance is, the whole world know next to nothing about art other than the peripheral stuffs. They want to debate the Alpha Seer because their self-delusion is so blinding that it leads them to think they surely have something under their belts after a lifetime of listening to the art professors and visiting galleries. They want to impress anyone in their path what information they have amassed about art in their lifetimes. Unfortunately, those remain just ordinary superficial information, nothing else!

When they cannot produce the proof, i.e., the specific reasons why a Titian composition is great, they always retreat by saying, ” Beauty is in the eyes of the beholders!” in order to save face. When a person holds on to such an attitude, he misses out on the chance of acquiring real knowledge.

You know who I think is a good art student? Someone who learns by opening his ears, his heart and mind, not his mouth! Such a student is a good art student because he can finally learn something he has known absolutely nothing about. A person of great wisdom can understand the benefit of silence when it comes to hearing about a topic of great murkiness. A wise person always seek enlightenment. Art is the last frontier for a superior mind. Art involves so much logical thinking! Art may be the bona-fide genius’ pet, but it is the last frontier for the vast majority of people. So unless your artistic mind is in the extremely rare (1 in 10 billion) percentile, don’t tell me you know what art is, because I can immediately call your bluff! By proclaiming you know art is just a self-delusion in life that you are not ready to admit.

There is the myth that art can raise a person from the gutter, make him/her a better person, comfort ones frayed spirit, etc. Too good to be true! If you really believe that, you should not have come to the Alpha Seer at all. You should have gone to a psychiatrist or a healthy living trainer instead. Art has very little comfort for your frayed spirit. Neither can art make you any better than you already are. Art is just a specific kind of design/ metaphorical invention for the divine pleasure of a specific kind of, and extremely limited number of people. These are those who can be fascinated by the beauty of the physical form, generally speaking. Art is in truth not for the consumption of the sensation-seeking public!

A great work of art only comes into being after it has been fully examined. Anything less than perfect won’t make the grade, and won’t allow it to play in the big leagues. There is a big league of great masters, just so you know. It is the unique league of Van Eyck, Titian, Velazquez, Zurburan, Rubens, Frans Hals, Adrian Brouwer, Ingres, Degas, Manet, Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso, deKooning, Gorky, and Knox Martin. Before them were the African art, the Egyptian Art, the Greek Art, the Islamic Art, the Medieval Art, and the ancient Oriental Art! They are the best of the best. If an art student does not learn art from the best of the best- but instead he goes to the beggarly academia, pays a handsome sum enough to bankrupt his dad, in order to “learn art” and become an artist, l can tell you immediately that he will be doomed forever, like every single art student I have come to know so far! I can tell you immediately that we have the case of a very stupid young person standing before us!

If you know the art of painting, you will know what it means to be a perfect composition. So clearly you have so far pretended you know! And if you persist on doing so, there is no one to blame but yourself, since you remain unenlightened. You would not pretend to be holding an Ace to me when in fact you have a bad hand, would you? It is criminal for anyone to pretend he knows art, according to the great master Knox Martin!

The following consecutive pictures show you what can be done to make a composition perfect. Examine the changes made to the first painting and try to understand why those changes are necessary. You may of course ask the Alpha Seer, but you must not continue to pretend you have the answer– because you really have none!

書畫同源經 BY THE ALPHA SEER 2017

善書者皆知王羲之書帖舉世無敵。何解？因其書法圓潤有力，佈局精湛超凡。字字之間，極有行氣，筆筆之處，常讚神妙。结構嚴謹有儀。意象華美秀麗。收放必能自如。其收也，如霸王坐陣，豪氣迫人，其放耶？若仙女散花，漂逸無極。贵而不凡，不食人间烟火！

今之世变。不爱師古，擅作主张，自圓其說，思绪浮亂，放浪形骸，好醜不識，大體不明，胡亂認同學苑之所謂教授，崇尚跟風，人云亦云。但見有人掛著耶魯、哈佛大學之銜，便不假思索，意亂情迷，甘投門下，寧為婢僕，妄自菲薄，目光如豆，甘作跟隊小羊，任人擺佈。

世人不知眾生皆有慧根，審美之道，只存於一心。天地悠悠，以正心為上。須知甘心受人愚弄，難逃騙網，當世之人宜重返正軌，以審心為上上計，明白書畫必有同源之理！何謂審心？以心為主，假觀評書畫之道於明心見性之理，是審心之謂也！

當代騙徒如Andy Warhol, Damien Horst, Marcel Duchamp, Francis Bacon, Frida Kahlo 等頗有十萬之眾。異端邪說，常使人迷惑。魚目混珠，羊頭賣狗。從此藝術之綱紀頓失。藝術之源斷絕。世人又常迷無明之士，輕信虛妄之説。無術無才之輩，隨便詐搆形象，又胡亂掛個意念，便妄云繪畫藝術，妖言惑眾，指鹿為馬。使有識者頓覺汗顔。

故鄙人曰： 真金不畏火煉。又曰：能閃爍者，未必是金！

乎觀評之道、皆存於心。觀評之始，亦贵乎心靜。所謂寧静足以致逺也。

畫有畫之自性， 以下作品，以黑白為主，皆係自性最终極之表現！故善觀評書畫者，須由此而入。須由心而入。宜作明心見性為旨。知道心外無法之理。觀評畫作，先正心靜意，與觀評書道並無二致！

贊曰： 世有王羲之之天才然后始知書法之準繩。世有鐵順（Titian) 之藝術天才然后始悟藝術之纲纪，故古人有云：微斯人，吾誰與歸？

This recent work, called Satyr and Nymph series by Ben Lau, is not an easy one to digest. It is to be expected, as most folks only view things in a piecemeal manner. Viewing art, it is important to take in the self- nature / the soul, of the composition all at once. Let not the narrative or the coloration distract you, as after all, the narrative or the coloration are just excuses, no more! They are just some sort of vehicles for the composition to come into existence. They are the circumstantial elements . They are not “the thing! ”

How to take in the self- nature of the composition all at once? I have spoken on this topic many times on www.thealphaseer.com ( thanks to my dear friend Billy Zhou in keeping it up for mankind!) The best technique is just narrowing your eyes when you are viewing the composition. By narrowing, you relax the focus of your vision field . Why do we need to widen the vision field? It is to make sure we are not looking at a particular point on the surface of the composition, so we can determine the entire white at a glance. In a similar way, try to also obtain the shape of the total black at a glance. If you are able to see those two great structures, congratulate yourself, buy yourself a good dinner to celebrate this triumph tonight, because you are face to face with the self-nature, or the soul, of the composition. The self-nature of a masterpiece will not lie to you. It is right here, right now. It will continue to be there in a million years. It will still be relevant after a million years! But that statement is not easily understood unless you have an extraordinary I. Q. !

To give you a deepen sense of this love for the great black and white structures I am showing another composition. On the right is a masterpiece by the great Knox Martin. Knox is inspired by African masks. That is a fact speaking loud and clear here. What the great master is doing here, my friends, is baring the self-nature/ soul of his composition to you! He is baring it without reservation, totally without the camouflage of coloration or emotion or narrative. If you are able to see his great black (1) and white (1) structures, congratulate yourself: you are on the right track– face to face with the self-nature/ soul of his composition. You are staring down into the soul of artistic greatness!

Artistic geniuses are so rare that they are one in a billion in each era. IN the 19th Century, we only have Ingres, Manet, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Picasso, Matisse, Juan Gris, and Seurat. In the 20th Century, we only have Gorky, de Kooning, Knox Martin etc. They can certainly not be found everywhere,–at least not in our current bustling postmodern art market! A no-talent painter such as Marcel Duchamp does not have a soul to offer to the world. If one is a mediocre artist, the soul being offered is likewise mediocre, random and confused. Only an artistic genius, a bona-fide artist, can express his/ her soul loud and clear with lucidity and power! A bona-fide genius has no need to charm you, or mesmerize your emotions. If you can recall the following people’s works and you will know exactly what I mean. Frida Kahlo, Munch, Norman Rockwell, Monet, Pollock, Pissarro, Damien Hirsts, Andy Warhol, Francis Bacon, as well as about 10 thousand other so-called artists are no-talent impostors. All they can offer are gimmicks and narratives. I am not attacking them at all, just pointing out the truth! If you have loved them before–why? no one is stopping you from that! Continue to do so since they seem to turn you on–which is certainly not a bad thing… . But I don’t envy you, since you won’t be able to get a full taste for greatness owing to your self-inflicted lock-down of your own vision. If you have become open-minded in the wrong way, there is no help, since all that glitters are not gold!

Hopefully at some point in time you will thank me for letting you know this particular trade secret of the bona-fide artistic geniuses. Hopefully one day you will be grateful to me in helping to awaken your own soul to the joy of artistic greatness! That’s why I am still here, writing this blog,  and offering to you free access to art appreciation– the proper way to approach artistic greatness, since I really want to set you free, from the exploitations of the academics. They are charging you thousands of dollars for completely useless “art classes.”

They are the blindest fish in the water, and yet they are offering you art classes! What audacity!!!!!But you are to blame for your herd instincts. After all, it is you, with your herd instincts, who  will willingly pay them for those completely useless “art classes!”