BAD REVIEW

Dear Friends:

Here's the worst review of my life, from the LA TIMES, by Leah Ollman, following which are some reflections. A number of people wrote in protest to the LA Times and some were published (see below). Included are some e-mails and letters from friends who read the review and felt compelled to respond. Rather than having a free floating paranoia that "someone out there in the art world" hates my work, the review gave that person a name. It's kind of a relief to engage in the dance with one's shadow. Very confronting to see one’s blood,sweat and tears made fun of, but nothing I haven’t felt myself on a bad day. Thanks Leah!

--Alex

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LA TIMES April 27,1999

Art News and Reviews

The Anatomy of an Artist: A Mind-Body-Spirit Cliche

by Leah Ollman, Special to the Times

Kandinsky did it, Barnett Newman did it. To some extent, every

artist since the first charcoal-wielding cave painter has probed the

ineffable relationship between matter and spirit. Few have done it as

garishly and theatrically as Alex Grey, whose work of the last 20 years is

on view in an embarrassment of a show at the Museum of Contemporary Art,

San Diego.

"Sacred Mirrors: The Visionary Art of Alex Grey" takes itself so

seriously that it precludes anyone else doing so. In the history of art,

the term "visionary" brings to mind characters like William Blake, whose

brilliance and oddity fueled each other and made for a captivating body of

work. Grey is no William Blake. His paintings look more like the stunted

offspring of fantasist Frank Frazetta and New Age guru Deepak Chopra (who

helped sponsor the show). They're wildly radiant, intensely detailed,

cosmically driven and eminently laughable.

The human body occupies center stage in Grey's work, as living,

pumping organism and seat of consciousness. Rendering skin translucent to

reveal the network of muscles, arteries, organs and bones within, Grey

exposes the body as the miracle it is, but he overexposes it to the point

of visual exhaustion, suffocating any sense of mystery or awe. While

celebrating the mind-body-spirit continuum, his images of couples in sexual

embrace or a woman giving birth feel wrung dry of any real emotional

charge.

Illustrative overkill plagues Grey's work throughout. In the recent

painting "Over-Soul," a fiery matrix of eyeballs emanating from a body sums

up the phenomenal workings of the senses and the soul. In "Painting"

(1998), the artist stands at his easel, his eyes casting greenish beams of

light onto the glowing canvas before him as he enacts a sci-fi version of

artistic creation. Grey's figures operate in a realm of raw energy, a

pulsating, throbbing world of luminous auras, beams and rays, a world of

such exaggerated special effects that the work verges on parody more than

on profundity.

"Sacred Mirrors" (1979-89), a series of paintings within large,

arch-shaped, sculptural frames, occupies one large gallery and forms the

centerpiece of the exhibition. Through the 15 paintings, Grey tracks

ascending levels of being, from the purely physical to the spiritually

transcendent. An experienced anatomist, he renders the body's various

systems--circulatory, respiratory and so on--with precision, but when

giving shapes and names to the shapeless and nameless drives within us, his

diagrammatic style feels forced

and superficial.

Grey draws on substantial traditions of mapping the body's energy

systems (as in acupuncture, for instance) as well as various religious

traditions. In his quest to define what he calls a "metaphysical anatomy,"

Grey, who is based in Brooklyn and has a long record as a performance

artist, embraces diverse influences with holistic openness: a little

Buddhism here, a touch of Hieronymous Bosch there.

That it all funnels down into such New Age cliches--a meditation

room, spacey Muzak--is unfortunate, because the art world, not to mention

the world at large, could use some powerful, life-affirming gestures as

antidotes to the dark cynicism that passes these days as hip. But Grey's

work ends up being too kitschy to truly touch the spirit. For simpler, more

incisive glimpses into the human condition, wander through the museum's

concurrent show of Lucian Freud etchings, unceremoniously installed nearby

in the gallery that doubles as an auditorium foyer.

* "Sacred Mirrors: The Visionary Art of Alex Grey," Museum of Contemporary

Art San Diego, 700 Prospect St., La Jolla, (619) 454-3541, through June 2.

********************************************

Alex here---Ouch! She uses some tiresome art critical cliches', throwing

in the "Illustrative overkill" swipe at art with understandable content and

meaning. If my work is comprehensible, it is aligned with the purpose of

sacred art over many millenia, and the most interesting artists working

today. Like other visionary art, my work doesn't need to obfuscate and be

ironic or mystifying because it points beyond itself to a much greater

mystery. This made Ms. Ollman uncomfortable. So she used the all

powerful new-age cootie repellant word, "kitsch" to explain my work. In my

dictionary, kitsch is derived from a German word "kitschen" which means "to

throw together(a work of art)", something tawdry to appeal to popular

taste. Since I spent 20 years painstakingly creating these

works, I would submit that it was Ms. Ollman's tawdry "review" that was

thrown together to appeal to popular sentiment.

But all that seems too nasty a response from me. So here's what I e-mailed

to the LA Times:

May 30, 1999

SOULPHOBIA

Leah Ollman's vicious attack on my art exhibition, "Sacred Mirrors: The

Visionary Art of Alex Grey" now at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

raises issues that go beyond a nasty review. (See LA Times, April 27,

Anatomy of an Artist: a Mind-Body-Spirit Cliche) Leah speaks for

contemporary art's spiritual blindness, and betrays her own, when she

sarcastically dismisses the 20 years of devotional labor on view.

St. Bonaventure describes 3 eyes of knowing, the eye of flesh that knows

the physical realm, the eye of mind that knows the conceptual and

linguistic realm, and the eye of contemplation that knows the visionary

spiritual realm. Ms. Ollman's eye of flesh and mind are open, but she has

not opened her eye of contemplation and so she has no experience or

understanding of the realm I depict.

It is my mission to create work that encourages the viewer to see deeply

into themselves, into the subtle realms of Being, even if such were

possible, into their own soul. In her utter contempt for the work I am

reminded of other unconscious biases like homophobia. I believe there is

a deep-seated intolerance operating here, and it afflicts many post-modern

intellects. I would call it, "Soulphobia."

Our post-modern intelligence fears and suppresses the intrusions of soul on

it's political intrigues, money games and divisive delusions of

separateness. The soul has a much more expansive agenda. It sings of our

interconnectedness with the kosmos, fostering our love, forgiveness and

potential for beauty, truth, goodness. Our spiritual nature is our only

source of meaning and value in life.

It's a shame that "Soulphobia" is so rampant in our desacralized cultural

media, and that my attempts at birthing a post-denominational spiritual art

are interpreted so scornfully. Every sacred art has relied on visionary

access to what Willaim Blake referred to as the Divine Imagination.

Curiously, Ms. Ollman invokes him ("He's no Blake.") to dismiss my work.

200 years ago, Blake got similar small-minded venomous criticism when he

exhibited. I guess this makes me part of the Bastard Tradition of

Visionary Artists, because we are so often reviled by our parent culture.

Why be concerned about a small thing like a bad art review when a war of

intolerance is raging in Kosovo, and Godless teenage nihilists are blowing

the heads off their classmates? It all comes down to VISION. When you

open the eyes of the soul you begin to see the world in it's sacred

radiance and cultivate a reverence for each other and our wounded web of

life. Daring to create healing and uplifting art that integrates body,

mind and spirit is heroic and necessary in these dark cynical days, not an

"embarassment" as Leah Ollman snidely suggests.

Alex Grey--Brooklyn

**************************

From: Ed Kowalczyk, lead singer and songwriter for rock group, LIVE

Subject: Re: Love and Transcendental Pugilism

Mr. Grey,

Pioneers always deal with this shit, especially those with a spiritual vision

that is real. It offends the chronically unenlightened because it draws into

question their entire egoic construct.

Remember one thing (I know that you already know this): The reason that we do

what we do is because we've had the Vision. Everytime I look at your work I

am penetrated by that ancient moment that extends into the fathomless future,

turns my conscious "self-point" inside out, simultaneously fucks my mind and

enlivens my heart. KEEP ON PAINTING IN THE FREE WORLD, ALEX!!!

your friend,

ed kowalczyk

*************************************************

May 1, 1999

Dear Los Angeles Times,

Are you experienced? Certainly, Leah Ollman, who trashed artist Alex Grey's

"Sacred Mirrors" installation at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego

in her April 27th LA Times review, is not experienced. Ollman dismisses Grey's

20-year body of work as a "garish embarrassment." From my perspective, it is

Ollman's own cliche-ridden review that someone should be apologizing for.

In Heaven and Hell, Aldous Huxley describes visionary consciousness: "First

and most important is the experience of light. Everything seen by those who

visit the mind's antipodes is brilliantly illuminated and seems to shine from

within. All colors are intensified to a pitch far beyond anything seen in the

normal state, and at the same time the mind's capacity for recognizing fine

distinctions of tone and hue is notably heightened."

Grey's work captures this state of consciousness and delivers it with

impeccable precision. So much so, that people have been heard to say that

some of Grey's paintings accurately portray visionary states that they have

experienced. (One woman, while having a near-death experience, clearly saw

the "tunnel of eyes" depicted in some of Grey's pieces, and another man

viewed this same internal space after smoking DMT.) Grey delivers archetypal

spiritual truths in a manner that can only be done by someone who has been

there.

Bombarded by billboards, traffic lights, and TV commercials, perhaps Ollman's perspective has been stunted to the point that anything colorful becomes "garish." I'd hate to read her thoughts about the spiritually-motivated, and quite colorful, yarn-paintings of the Huichol Indians.

Ollman wraps up her review with one accurate comment: "the art world, not to

mention the world at large, could use some powerful, life-affirming gestures

as antidotes to the dark cynicism that passes these days as hip." As is so

often the case with critics, that which they are most critical of is a

reflection of their own state of being, not the work that they are

condemning. Ollman should take her own advice.

Sincerely,

Jon Hanna

****************************************

& FROM PROF. PHIL JACOBSON

5-12-99

Alex,

Wow! Tough perspective to deal with, and its so pervasive! I had a similar

review many years ago by the now renowned 'critic' (and closet painter),

Robert Morgan. Morgan said that a 'visionary' artist and art is impossible

TO EXIST today because of modern 'media and technology, and the speed of

communication.' I wrote a personal letter to him - trying to explain how

the artist still serves as the 'technology or communication' of Spirit, and

that there is no instrumentation that replaces that somatic transmission

that occurs between the 'artist's fingers, the space between, and the

surface of - the canvas', now, and probably never will be. No response

from the 'dead heart' critic. But I FELT BETTER!

You are an important artist Alex! You will always be that regardless of

what anyone says. The effects of your art will out live any 'current

commentary', positive or negative, and I am not sure how much influence

current critics have on 'people' these days anyway. The 'Emperor's New

Clothes' effect on the throngs is not nearly as considerable a force as

when the New York Expressionists were 'made' by the power of one critic

(Greenburg). It seems gallery/museum directors (i.e. Castelli, etc.) have

more power these days in the Visual Arts than the critics do.

A part of me, (Jewish Spiritual Mafia), in regards to Ollman's review, just

says 'fuck da bitch'. However, there is one thing she kind of suggested

that I resonate too and that is - as 'visionary artists' I think it may be

wise for us, maybe even more effective, to reflect even more on the

Expression of Spirit. We need to constantly question our art, THAT IS,the

Art of the Great Mystery as something truly 'beyond' depiction, therefore -

less narration and more trusting the 'responders participation' may be

something to look at. What do you think of that, Alex? Meher Baba called

the ABSOLUTE: 'the Beyond the Beyond State', and I think as

aesthetic-expressers of Spirit we need to be careful not to produce a

'DECLARATION of A Mystery as opposed to the CREATION OF MYSTERY'- without

disorientation or confusion, but with clarity and wonder. We all need to

check in with ourselves in this regard and I know you have always done that

- but, maybe its time to really look at the tremendous artistic

accomplishments you have devotionally created the last several decades, and

look at where you may go from here, perhaps your direction stays in its

current expression- perhaps not. We all need to look at that. I love our

buddy Ken's statement: 'to Transcend But Include'.

The other thing that has been bothering me for years (since 1980) is the

use of the word 'visionary'. This has become a real 'trigger' word and

button pusher for critics, gallerys and other artists not 'in' the genre.

We can come off as saying we are 'superior' than other artists and people

in general. Do we come up with a new term ? What 'name' really

encompasses the process and the art of what we do? This is why I have told

Fuchs we need another NAME for the MUSEUM & ACADEMY we are working on (I

will be circulating the 'names' I have gathered so far- today, thank you

for your contribution Alex- big kiss....). I am sharing this email and

your 'review' with others for the sake of stirring conversation, other

opinions, ideas, and revelations - (and of course, support and reflection

for you). I hope thats O.K. with you. I assume it is - since we are

talking about a newspaper - public 'review'.

As artists, as soon as we refer to ourselves or our books, or our

exhibitons, or lectures as 'visionary', we are, in a way, 'separating'

ourselves from others, perhaps it is too PEDANTIC ? The 'visionary

artist' can come off as saying we 'see things' (and you don't) and now

share them with you. We devotionally serve a VISION larger than 'us', but

not different than any one of us, look see! As collective awareness rises,

perhaps we need to be more 'inclusive' somehow. The label 'visionary' in

AMERICA (not true elsewhere in parts of Europe, Japan, Israel- hey what

about you guys in Australia?) has a negative connotation and is too often

misunderstood by the critics - other artists- et.al as ARROGANCE, or as New

Agey crystal-ufo-fairy-dairy schmeckah. Do we ignore that response, or

play with it? ( Have you all seen Damien's 'Visionary Art Magazine'?

Superb! He just sent me a copy.) Even when I do not agree with critics and

the like regarding 'visionary art', I understand the trigger-response

mechanism in play, and we find this knee-jerk reaction in music, literature

in holistic/contemplative education but most prominantly and most potently

in the VISUAL ARTS where one can point a finger at something both 'solid

and subtle' and SEE, or NOT.

Know that I love you, and I KNOW that an army of critics could not put your

hand and brush down. I support you Alex, and all of us - that over time,

will also get such awful reflections on our art. But, oh. . . when we

witness even one human being standing before a work of art we've done and

they are speechless, breathless, in child-like wonder. . .that has more

value, more soul-weight, more remembrance, joy, and fulfillment -than all

the lip-flapping, anti-spirit heads we will ever encounter. Remember those

people Alex? How can one forget?

With so much love!

Prof. Phil

******************************************

From: Alex Grey

Dear Professor,

You are so right in your reflections. I feel similarly about most everything you said. Thanks for sharing your encounter with Morgan. The creep. It's a good time for reflection for me, and yes the word "visionary" can have a negative arrogant vibe. Weird that with the Sacred Mirrors book I fought with the publisher about it. He was insistent about using the word visionary, I just wanted it called art, in the end, he won. I even discouraged it's use in the current exhibition, but they really wanted it. Obviously I believe in such a thing as visionary art, but I don't like labeling myself, it kind of sets you up for a severe scrutinizing, and now it's stuck. Oy.

Other options?:

Spiritualism

Astral Art

Entheogenic Art

Numinist Art or Numinism

Soul Art

Mystic Art

Noetic Art

Transpersonal Art

Transcendentalism

Transcendental Art

Woo-Woo Art

Garish Theatrical New Age Kitsch Art

Puking Dolphin Art

Damned Hippie Art

Critically Snubbed Art

Hallucinogenism

Integral Art

Inner Art

Insider Art

Consciousness Art

Fantastic Art

Not So Fantastic Art

Transfiguration

Trance Art or Trancism or Trance Painting

TransArt

Transformative Art

Universal and Divine Art

World Spirit Art

Non-Denominational Sacred Art

Millennial Art

Perennial Vision Art

In the end I keep coming back to Visionary. Because the work is usually from visions of the innerworlds. And it's true that the arrogant vibe comes from a sense that it's hierarchically on a different plane, a higher plane than the mundane. That's actually the truth. Subtle soul vision art is emanating from a higher dimension of consciousness than conceptual art, expressionist works or works that are primarily concerned with surface and materials. It's one of the reason's that we hate it more when it fails to deliver the goods. It risks more and can fall from a higher height - profaning or diminishing what we would like to be sacred. So usually only the best and most transcendentally flipped out maxxed out weird-ass shit can convince our scrutiny and judgement to give up, to shut up, to get out of your head and feel and know that the ecstasy is real. Spirit is real. God is real and making the art to wake us up to our real and infinite Being. Boink.

So we fail mostly, but I still think it's worth the effort. Funny, in looking over an old notebook (year and a half old) I found a self-loathing description of my own work in equally negative and surprisingly similar language that Leah Ollman used. So my negative inner critics are equally harsh and unforgiving, but what the hell can you do. The manic self-possessed art self is persistent, and as you said there are moments when others find the work wonderful. I've probably gotten more than my share of good vibes from friends and strangers about my work. But it seems that we do need a fairly stable inner focus, because depending on any outside support, psychologically or monetarily, for our art is iffy at best. Shouldn't prevent us from putting it out there though.

Whew, I love you brother, and thanks again for your reflections,

Alex

********************************************

To: Alex Grey

Subject: LA Times Review

Date: Tue, 4 May 1999

Now you're important enough to get panned in major

newspapers. Don't let it go to your head. :)

- Brian Moriarty

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On the Question of Kitsch

From: Christian De Boeck

To: Alex Grey

Sent: 07 May 1999

Subject: Fantastic Art/Sci-Fi Art/New Age Art/Kitsch, etc., etc.

Alex

"Perhaps I should do a bit of explaining: my definition and understanding of "fantastic art" specifically excludes all so-called "science fiction art"

(with the exception of serious artists like H.-R. Giger), all "fantasy art"

(Frank Frazetta, Boris Vallejo, et al), most so-called "visionary art",

which is just really bad, commercial, kitsch, wishy-washy New Age crap (I'veseen enough dolphins to last me several lifetimes!!!), as well as thoseartists -- however good their work might be -- who are purely illustrators.This is not meant as a criticism of their work. I very much admire and lovethe work of, for example, Brian Froud, Alan Lee, Wayne Anderson, Patrick Woodruff and others, but they are illustrators pure and their work doesn't

fit my rather strict definition of the fantastic and the perimeters I have set for my book. It also excludes what I call "Cosmic Art", which tends towards the abstract, and which deserves a separate study on its own. But I'll leave that to someone else...

A lot of so-called fantastic art/surrealism walks the tightrope between

being great art and kitsch -- serious art and illustration. The main

criticism levelled by serious mainstream and hack art critics alike against fantastic art -- and all realistic narrative, literary

and veristic art in general -- even when writing about artists like Fuchs,

Dali, Nerdrum, Johfra, Alex Grey and others, is that their work is "kitsch", "purely decorative" or "merely illustration", etc., etc., and that they are only illustrators. The general tendency is to dismiss these artists out-of-hand. In a television interview Ernst Fuchs once said that "Kitsch ist das, was uns gefaellt" ("kitsch is that which pleases us") -- to which his critics would no doubt answer that he has been trying very hard to please us. A recent exhibition of his work held in Vienna drew over 2,000 visitors a day! So I guess he must be doing something right and "pleasing" at least some people -- myself being one of them. He's been pleasing me (by blowing my mind) ever since I discovered his work at the age of fourteen back in the early 60's. In a recent article in ARTnews Odd Nerdrum turned the tables on his critics by calling himself a painter of kitsch...

For me the "fantastic" in all its guises: fantastic realism, surrealism,

post-surrealism, neo-surrealism, etc., etc., is not a genre, style, movement or school of art. (Notice I deliberately haven't used caps so as to distinguish these terms from so-called "official" movements [incidentally, the two "surrealists" I most admire are Salvador Dali and Antonin Artaud, both of whom were expelled from the movement by Andre Breton!]). I rather see the fantastic as a constant subterranean stream or vein into which many artists have consciously or unconsciously tapped into for their inspiration. I like what Gregg Simpson (see the Link to his website below) had to say

about how I am trying to integrate and create a compressive, coherent, organic overview of the fantastic from the Renaissance to the present: "I was so glad to see Ernst, Tanguy and others in there with Fuchs and Giger. I like the way you have erased the differences between 'fantastic art' and 'surrealist art'" (my italics: CDB). From the Renaissance onward most of the great schools, styles, style epochs of art, i.e. Mannerism, Romanticism, Symbolism, Expressionism, Surrealism and Fantastic Realism, have and continue to produce artists who have tapped into the fantastic vein. But I'm getting carried away here. For a detailed definition of the fantastic as I understand it you will have to wait for the Introduction to my book -- if the damn thing ever gets finished...

I should perhaps also mention here that I am not at all out to categorise, label or pigeonhole artists indiscriminately. I remember

Sibylle Ruppert writing me that she would not want to be included in a

"kraut und raubenfels" ("weed and turnip field") -- which is precisely what I am determined to try to avoid... This means that there will have to be some kind of stringent selection process based on a number of criteria to determine which artists will and which will not be included in the book.There are many borderline cases it will be difficult to decide..."

Of course I could go on and on -- and will when I have the time -- and add a lot more to this...

Christian

***********************

To: Christian DeBoeck

From: Alex Grey

Dear Christian,

Thanks for sending me the "Fantastic Art/Sci-Fi Art/New Age Art/Kitsch, etc., etc." e-mail. There are many fine lines you are drawing and I think they are important to draw in order to gain an understanding of the giant tree with deep roots and many branches that I still like to call Visionary Art. Of course, it's preferable not to categorize or label-- just to see the work and be blown away by the best of it. That's the experience of mind-chatter stopping radiant presence or creative mystery that the great works key you into. We're amazed by the visionary artist, their works and ourselves simultaneously. Our mind's are blown because we see how truly weird and amazing and infinite the "Divine Imagination" is, our own and the artists whose works we admire. The artist's mapping of the divine imagination then becomes our own, we can see deeper into visionary reality because of their trailblazing inner eye.

(Here's the sermon) Art is the song of the inner life. Arts key role in the human drama is as a "great convincer", not of one myth, religion or ideology over another, but as the raw passion and evolutionary force of the inner world itself. Our inner world, the life of our imagination with its intense feelings, our fears and loves, guides our intentions and actions in the world. Our inner world is the only true source of meaning and purpose we have. Art has a function and a mission to interpret the world, to reveal the condition of the soul, to encourage our higher nature and awaken the spiritual faculties within every individual. This mission can be thwarted by interpretations of art which narrowly define it as fashionable baubles of the rich. Pop art sensibility keeps our mind focused on the surfaces, visionary art pierces the surfaces and keys us to the revelations of the inner worlds that requires a certain level of transformative engagement of the viewer with the visionary art object.

There are some exceptions I take to the kitsch self-labeling that my favorite visionary artists are prone to doing. Firstly, I don't think that their original intentions were to create kitsch or mega-kitsch (like Jeff Koons). Their original intentions (and I am perhaps deluding myself on this, but I can only go by my own motives) were only to be true to their own vision. The lack of irony or self-deconstructing contemporary art gamesmanship in the artwork testifies to it's guidance by inner truth and inner necessity. We respect the visionary artist because they reveal the uncanny, frighteningly truthful and beautiful inner worlds. The ascription or interpretation of the work as kitsch by jaded spiritually blind asshole critics, is the critics attempt to make the work go away--to not trouble them. To dismiss it. The artist's calling themselves kitsch is a form of verbal aikido, a way of disarming the critical enemy and their secret verbal insult weapons. What the critics are missing is that they have labeled any experience of their own inner spiritual world and the potential of revelatory content and meaning as kitsch. And this is because they have had no authentic experience of the visionary realm nor do they understand the transfiguring implications of it's truth. That's sad, I feel sorry about it. But here we have the cultural artistic battleground of the 21st century, the re-entry of the visionary soul, the inner contemplative eye, into serious art dialogue. Glad to hear you are working on a book on this subject.

That's not to say that our art is never kitsch. What is kitsch after all? I would say those glowing dolphins that make most of us puke would qualify. A great visionary artist may sometimes do "knock-offs" of themselves, easy repeats without challenging themselves or their viewers. This starts the kitsch process. When an artist is not powerfully creatively and inventively engaged. Maybe it happens to all of us sometimes, we take an easier or known path instead of trailblazing...For mostly marketing reasons, even Picasso mechanically turned out "Picassos" sometimes. Part of the reason we call something kitsch is because we've seen it a million times, and then the artist does the same thing over again.

Kitsch is totally expected sugar coated sentimentality in totally accepted forms. No surprise. Pastel greeting card children in a garden full of candy flowers with no bees. Ceramic garden trolls. (hey wait, I like those) As I said before, in my dictionary, kitsch is derived from a German word "kitschen" which means "to throw together (a work of art)", and "something tawdry to appeal to popular taste." The level of obsessive involvement and fanatical painstaking detail that goes into great visionary art usually removes it from such classification. The thing that is similar or overlaps is subject matter, content. Meaningful content has been the great absent Father of most modern and contemporary art. It gives many people the willies. I call content the absent Father because what I consider art is the result of the metaphysical marriage of form and content. Form has had her beautiful century of experimentation and now needs to be seriously fucked by content. The inner visionary worlds must re-enter mainstream art. Or we won't ever give birth to a new integral visionary universal spiritual art. That's my hidden agenda, my sermon in words and paint.

phew and many best wishes to keep the thoughts thinking and words flowing,

Alex

From: BRADMarth@aol.com

Date: Mon, 3 May 1999 14:21:14 EDT

Subject: La Jolla show

To: alexgrey@pop.interport.net

MIME-Version: 1.0

I just got back from a vacation in San Diego/La Jolla and I found the art

scene out there really barren until I went into the museum in La Jolla. I

looked at your paintings and walked out with goosebumps and tears in my eyes.

We had lunch and went back and looked at them again and I walked out with

tears and goosebumps all over again. Your temple paintings: the one about

conception made me see making love in a whole new way. The painting that

culminates with a view into emptiness made me want to work harder on my

cushion. But the one at the end - where the viewer sees him or herself in

the mirror with God blazing out of his/her own forehead - that is an

astonishing gift of generosity. Thank you so very much. Martha

*********************************

From: Leo <leo@powerup.com.au>