The Alpha Seer understanding true art

Guidance to Understanding
the Alpha Seer
by Leander S. Hughes

There is a crisis in the modern world of visual art.
Art has lost its taste; or rather, we have lost our
ability or will to distinguish between tastes. A
stack of Brillo boxes (Warhol, 1965) is displayed
in the
same institution as a Van Gogh and we are told
that both works should be treated as equally
great. Of course, we have the right to hold a different
opinion, but not to speak it if we have any
interest in
maintaining our appearance as educated and cosmopolitan.
Instead, we are encouraged to work
out for ourselves ways in which a stack of cardboard
boxes that once contained steel-wool scouring
pads could
somehow rival the Van Gogh: “The boxes speak to
us by depicting the pervasiveness of commercialism
in all aspects of modern life, even fine art!”
we might exclaim. And we would not be wrong.
But what about
enjoyment? What about beauty?
The modern fine art expert will tell you that
beauty is just a matter of personal taste or a figment
of our culture’s collective imagination.
There is no sense in discussing it, since even those
who claim to see it,
disagree on what is beautiful and what is not. But
are we all really so different?
If you were allowed to take either the Brillo boxes
or the Van Gogh home (and assuming the monetary
values of both were equal), which of the
works would you take? Before you answer, let us
add one more element to the above scenario:
When you get home you will be locked
in a room with nothing in it but the work you
have chosen set behind glass, and you will not be
allowed to leave the room except to use the bathroom
for seven years.
Congratulations to those of you who would
choose the Van Gogh over the Brillo boxes. You
have provided hope for the possibility of beauty
that transcends individual differences. If you are
feeling condescended right now thinking, how
could anybody not choose the Van Gogh, take a
trip to your local art museum and look at what is
on display there. How many of those works could
you call beautiful? How many of
them could engage you visually for any significant
length of time? The unfortunate but probable
answer is few, if any. “Ah, but who says those
works are meant to be beautiful?” retorts the fine
art expert.
The expert seems to have a point.Maybe a given
work was created to shock the viewer or to
encourage the viewer to re-contextualize or
deconstruct some aspect of life, society, gender,
politics, etc. Thus, even if there is some universal
element to beauty, beauty was probably the last
thing on the artist’s mind when creating the work.
More likely, the artist made a conscious attempt
to avoid beauty. “Now you’re
catching on,” says our expert.
Let us imagine that, after your thought-provoking
visit to the local modern art museum, you decide
to try out a new restaurant nearby.When the food
comes, you are amazed; you have never seen cuisine
like this before and you wonder what it is
made of, from what
country it originates, and what techniques were
used to create it—very interesting. Then you take
a bite and find to your surprise that the food has
absolutely no taste. You try another bite; again, no
flavor at
all. You complain to the waiter, and he brings you
another dish, but again, the food has no taste! You
are beginning to think you have lost your mind,
when the chef storms out of the kitchen and
demands to know what all of the fuss is about.
You explain that the food is completely tasteless.
The chef looks at you as if you were a complete
dunce and says, “Who says it’s supposed to have
taste?”
Our modern artist-turned-chef would not be in
business very long. However, museums and
schools of the fine arts continue to thrive, accepting
and producing work that lacks what would
logically seem to be the most important quality
for a visual work to possess: the
potential for long-term visual engagement and
enjoyment, aka beauty.Worse, we have been persuaded
that this situation is not a problem; that
the equivalent of a lifetime eating occasionally
thought-provoking, but utterly flavorless food is
the norm, if not the ideal. In fact, many of us have
been so focused on everything but the visual flavor
of the works we view as to lose or even fail to
ever gain the awareness that some works really do
have the power to visually engage us and provide
lasting enjoyment. Lacking the awareness of beauty,
we doom ourselves to a world in which there is
no difference between a Van
Gogh and a stack of cardboard boxes or a
Cezanne and jar of human feces (ala Manzoni,
1961).
The purpose of this book is to awaken us from
the purgatorial dream cast upon us by modern art
aficionados.“Alpha Seer” is a term invented by the
author referring to one who is fully awakened to
beauty. Through his lectures, master painter and
Alpha Seer Ben Lau helps summon and deepen
our ability to sense and appreciate the dynamic
interaction of form, line, and color in great works
of art. Although this
dynamism, which the author describes as a
supreme mathematical relationship, cannot be
distilled into a formula or recipe for beauty, it can
be pointed to through leading the viewer’s attention
to certain characteristics in a piece. To lead
our attention thus,Master Lau brings out the
geometric ground plan of masterworks in detailed
diagrams, while describing the relationships highlighted
in his commentaries.
Through the development of well-defined terminology,
eyeball comparisons of different works
and succinct logical arguments, Master Lau brings
the attentive reader to an understanding of
metaphor and the difference between a masterpiece,
which possesses metaphor, and an illustration,
which does not possess it. Throughout the
book,Master Lau makes clear that the views
expressed are not his alone but are also held by
other Alpha Seers including master painter Knox
Martin, who has contributed the preface of this
book, and other great masters who have come
before him.
Ultimately, the Alpha Seer helps us achieve an
understanding of great visual art as just one manifestation
of the rhythms and poetic movement
which also underlie master works in music, literature,
dance
and other forms of artistic expression. Moreover,
through sensitizing the reader to the supreme
mathematical relationships in masterful art, it
leads the attentive reader to the experience of
beauty which goes beyond the individual, beyond
culture, and beyond thought itself.

Leander S. Hughes holds a Bachelor of Arts in East
Asian Studies from the University of Wisconsin,
Madison. He received his master’s degree in 2007 at
a Japanese university. He is currently a professor
teaching English at Saitama University, Japan.

Beauty rests only in the UNKNOWN. It never comes from the process of thinking. With that one may be fully assured that the term “conceptual art” is simply a worthless speculation about beauty. Ideation about the thing is not the thing itself! “I seek the knowledge of love but I have never been in love!” “What stupidity! Throw the bum out!” Thundered the Alpha Seer. By now it should be clear to all that thinking is from memory, and memory is dead. “There is nothing new under the sun!” declared Nietzsche. And amazingly he was right for once with art ! If a work has failed to transport your spirit to the beyond, or the absolute,–that profound realm of the mysterious, one might as well dismiss it altogether. It has no more significance in that room than any other object found therein! Never mind what the academics or art critics tell you! The most tragic thing in these modern eras of ours is not the fact that those “experts” cannot tell art apart from non-art,–the deep tragedy lies instead in modern man’s total reliance on those “experts” or “specialists!” I call it Humanity’s most unforgivable surrender to evil since the Holocaust, when apathy coupling with a herd’s instinct for self- preservation had vastly enabled Adolf Hitler’s twisted conceptualizations. Be fooled NOT by your own ego! NEVER trust your herd instincts or the so-called conventional wisdom! ( e.g. Oh, yeah, I think Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp, Turner, or Rauschenberg is great because important people say so, VIPs like Arthur Danto or Alberto Bingo said so!– even though I didn’t have the foggiest clue as to what they really wanted to say!–I ‘d better agree with them,–who am I to disagree with experts anyway? Yeah, it’s safer to do so or else I would become the laughing stock in my circle of friends!) A work of art, folks, is REALLY something else! Listen to the best of Mozart/ Bach/Beethoven, then suddenly blare out the Beatles, the Blues, the Jazz or whatever tunes that has found a path via the market to the public’s ears in the last 250 years. Make earnest comparisons and feel the difference. Anyone can do it! The difference is not such a deep thing to be yielded up. As long as you have patience,–you can be better than any “expert” on earth! Patience is itself from that inner beauty found within you. It is the only luxury you may enjoy when all else have failed you. The “experts/professors” may have known all the jargons, the technicalities, all the anecdotes, the names or events. But they are stupid! You only have to know one thing: the DIFFERENCE! That silence in the DIFFERENCE should trump all their petty knowledge! It is on the circumference of music that they have built their knowledge and livelihood, but your knowledge of DIFFERENCE is the most powerful of all,–since you have gone into the heart of an art and you have studied its very soul! An academic’s dictation, therefore, should no longer have any place in deciding which music provides the best benefit to anyone of us from now on. When an individual is thus rebellious, then there is still hope in the world! The art critics will cease to find a place in your heart, as in truth neither would you offer sanctuary to ANY of their conditioning within that deep hall of your soul! By the same token, set up a Titian, a Velazquez, a Frans Hals, a Rubens, or a Cezanne by your tea room, look intently at them for some time; making sure that you are fully taken in by their sublime forms; then place some of what the academia have the audacity to call “art” next to any one of them. It is then one may realize that, in all true art there is found the very magic to engage your soul! That is the very magic of beauty, from which the universe invokes a blueprint for wondrous relationships! Albert Einstein once exclaimed, ” Nothing in the universe can be more beautiful than the mysterious!” Beautiful is the mystery that resides in those sublime forms! All you ever need in determining what is beautiful is through the simple act of COMPARISON, since the very mystery that Einstein alludes to abides in the forms. Look deeply, making serious notes of their formal beauty. If you are aware enough, you can actually hear falseness drop away with an alarming throb. The work of impostors can never quite stand up to earnest scrutiny! Don’t let your own Ego fool you, though! Eager to achieve, the Ego is perpetually saying: “Okay, I’ve got it,”– while in truth, one remains in stupidity and ignorance!–go back to Square One!!! So watch your Ego! If you are not sure, be very honest with yourself since this is a great moment of reckoning! You must look at yourself in the mirror every day. Can one actually afford to be such a fraud,– day in and day out,– and with so much self-delusion? In the event that no difference can be yielded even after a long and painful scrutiny, as it may happen with a good percentage of humanity, ( please don’t feel sad: most are born blind to beauty anyway!) then art is probably not something for you! Look instead at the flowers,– or at a glorious sunset,–allow the happy sights of the mountains, trees or rivers to dissolve in it, never to wake up from that hilarious spell again! Beauty found in nature may prove more suited to your temperaments! Or you may try to find beauty in songs or in poetry. Existence can be so blissful,–and with beauty, so much more powerful. THE ALPHA SEER **** The seers are the Awakened Ones. The Alpha Seer is a seer who is awakened to Beauty.

From: Ben Lau Date: Sat, Feb 7, 2009 at 10:59 AM Subject: Current state of affair with art: WALLOWED IN CAMEL MUD! To: Ben Lau Speaking of MCAD, this story was suddenly recalled: The French Foreign Legion in Algeria had a new general. As it turns out, most of their generals were French nationals, and pretty young were they. Older folks simply could not withstand the great hardship that came with desert campaigns. To get acquainted with his new base the general was shown around the barracks by a captain. It was a sweaty affair since Algeria is an extremely hot country. At the end of the tour, the general asked the captain,” What about the house at the far south west corner, the one with a green door? You never said anything about it.” Amazed to be caught at this negligence, the captain stammered, “Oh that,–that’s just an empty space, sir. When the men feel the urge to relieve themselves, there is a camel inside, . . .” “Now that is very disgusting! That’s enough, you may go now!” said the general to the captain. Being stationed in a desolate desert far away from France could amass in a young general a good deal of unused energy and that took its toll on him. He felt a strong urge to get rid of it. So he went to the captain and asked for the keys to the barracks at the south west corner of the base. Behind the green door he found the cutest camel that Algeria could offer, . . . ******************************************************************** Meanwhile the captain became worried because it was quite some time since the general had disappeared.The general had earlier asked him for the keys to the south west barracks so he knew where to find him. The captain looked inside every single house in that direction, but– nothing! Finally he came to the house with the green door. As he looked inside he saw a man totally naked, his body swiveling excitedly but totally smeared with camel shit and urine. The captain asked the general, “What are you doing here, sir?” Hardly expecting this intrusion,least of all such a stupid question, the general was embarrassed and not at all humored. And he replied in a bashful but harsh tone,” Didn’t you say that when the men feel the urge to relieve themselves they would come over here?” ” I did, sir! But just as I wanted to say something more, you stopped me! I was really saying, when the men feel the urge to relieve themselves they would come here,– find a camel to ride into town,then find a woman there,. . . — but you stopped me before I could finished!” ******************************************************************** That is the current state of affair with art of our time,–not just inside a local art school, but the world over! Indeed, not unlike the general in the story, our so-called “artists” are wallowing in shit and urine! Don’t want to believe me?check it out yourself: check out all the art magazines, or any mass media on arts, the “avant garde” museums and galleries, . . . just find out for yourself! The misunderstanding of art has become such wallowing in camel mud! Folks’ egos have long stopped listening! So whenever they feel an urge to relieve themselves, anything go! — Ben Lau, a.k.a.the Alpha Seer* * The Alpha Seer is one who is awakened to Beauty.