Alex Grey

[jenks frosted]

Alex Grey

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The cover of Tool's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tool_%28band%29) 10,000 Days (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10%2C000_Days) by Alex Grey.


Alex Grey (born November 29 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_29), 1953 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953) in Columbus, Ohio (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbus%2C_Ohio)) is an artist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist) specializing in spiritual (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirituality) and psychedelic art (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelic_art) (or visionary art (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visionary_art)) that is sometimes associated with the New Age (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Age) movement. His oeuvre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oeuvre) spans a variety of forms including performance art (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_art), installation art (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Installation_art), sculpture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sculpture), and most significantly, painting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Painting). Grey is a member of the Integral Institute (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Institute). He is also on the board of advisors for the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Cognitive_Liberty_and_Ethics).
Contents

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1 Paintings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Grey#Paintings)
2 Philosophy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Grey#Philosophy)
3 Reception (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Grey#Reception)
3.1 Painting and music groups (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Grey#Painting_and_music_groups)
3.2 In the media (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Grey#In_the_media)
4 Collections (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Grey#Collections)
5 See also (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Grey#See_also)
6 References (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Grey#References)
7 External links (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Grey#External_links) //
[edit (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alex_Grey&action=edit&section=1)] Paintings

Grey's paintings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Painting) can be described as an unusual and contemporary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_art) blend of sacred (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_art) or visionary art (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visionary_art) and postmodern art (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_art); one term used to describe the artist's work is "transpersonal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transpersonal)". His work often depicts aspects of the supernatural (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernatural) world overlayed with aspects of the natural (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural) world. Some viewers report that elevated or spiritual states are induced while viewing his images, which might be described as the traditional purpose of sacred art (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_art). His work has an eclecticism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eclecticism_in_art) that often integrates auras (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aura), human (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human) anatomy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomy), religious (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious) icons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icon) (sometimes reminiscent of thangkas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thangka)), geometric (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometry) shapes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape) and tessellations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tessellation) (sometimes reminiscent of mandalas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandala)), in natural (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature), industrial (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrialisation), and multicultural (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicultural) situations. The human figures are sometimes shown nude (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nude) (usually with partially translucent skin), in sexual (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_intercourse) situations, or in the act of meditation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditation). This incorporation of the "high" and "low", the sacred (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred) and secular (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular), gives Grey's art a postmodern (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_art) feel. However, the sacred aspect essentially expunges any sense of irony (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony) often associated with postmodern art (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_art) (one might cite some people's reactions to the art of Andy Warhol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Warhol)). In contrast, Grey's approach to the human figure is decisively clinical, which conceptually trivializes the spirituality of his work. Regardless, the spiritual (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirituality) aspect provides an organization that enables Grey to overcome his eclecticism; his work may thus be characterized as syncretic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncretism).

[edit (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alex_Grey&action=edit&section=2)] Philosophy

Integral Theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_theory) Integral theorists:
Clare Graves (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clare_Graves), Don Beck (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Beck)
Ken Wilber (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Wilber) Integral themes:
AQAL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AQAL)
Integral ecology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_ecology)
Integral politics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_politics)
Integral psychology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_psychology) Influences on integral theory:
James Mark Baldwin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Mark_Baldwin)
Jean Gebser (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Gebser)
Jürgen Habermas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCrgen_Habermas)
Erich Jantsch (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Jantsch)
Rupert Sheldrake (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake) Integral artists:
Alex Grey
Stuart Davis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Davis_%28musician%29) Integral organizations:

Integral Institute (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Institute)
Integral University (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_University) Grey has also made his own contribution to the philosophy of art (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_art) in his book The Mission of Art (1998). Therein, he promotes the possibility of the mystical (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystical) potential of art: he argues that the process of artistic creation can (and should) play a role in the enlightenment of the artist. For him, the process of artistic creation holds the potential of transcending the limitations of the mind and more fully expressing the divine spirit. He also believes that art can induce within the viewer an elevated state wherein spiritual states of being are attained.
In an interview with Ken Wilber (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Wilber) for Integral Naked (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Naked), Grey described an experience of the shared hallucination (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucination) between him and his wife, which led him to believe in spirituality (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirituality) and spiritual practice (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritual_practice).

[edit (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alex_Grey&action=edit&section=3)] Reception


[edit (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alex_Grey&action=edit&section=4)] Painting and music groups

Grey's artwork has often been used by music groups on their album covers.

An album of David Byrne (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Byrne_%28musician%29) remixes called Visible Man featured Grey's artwork.
Michael Hedges (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hedges)'s album Torched features one of Grey's "Holy Fire" paintings on the cover.
Nirvana (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_%28band%29)'s album In Utero (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Utero) featured Grey's art as album artwork.
The cover of the String Cheese Incident (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_Cheese_Incident)'s album Untying The Not features Grey's work Cosmic Elf, commissioned specifically for the album.
The rock band (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_band) Tool (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tool_%28band%29) has featured Grey's artwork as album artwork for their album Lateralus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateralus). He also executed the stage design for Tool for the associated tour that included massive reproductions of the album artwork. Grey also provided the artwork for the 2006 Tool album 10,000 Days (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10%2C000_Days).
Grey's most intimate collaboration with an artist other than his wife, has been with creative director and musical composer Kenji Williams (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenji_Williams) in the 2004 live multimedia performance and DVD Worldspirit - featuring the animated artwork and live spoken word of Alex Grey, coupled with the project direction and live music of Kenji Williams.
The alleged mystical properties of Grey's artwork are discussed in Stuart Davis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Davis_%28musician%29)' 2006 DVD Between the Music.


This guy paints some really crazy stuff. Does anyone know much about this guy? I know his gallery is in NYC. Some of his work is too far out there for me but some I really like. Like these:

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j2/igbt640/17SMVoidClearLight.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j2/igbt640/despair.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j2/igbt640/gaia.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j2/igbt640/theologue.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j2/igbt640/pntng.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j2/igbt640/16SMUniversalMindLattice.jpg

[dj 2way]

im a fan, been for years now

[acidhouse]

Interesting stuff, I remember reading that he use's weed and blindfolds to help his ideas, which would explain the craziness.

Psychedelic art refers to art that is inspired by the psychedelic experience induced by drugs such as LSD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LSD), Mescaline (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mescaline), and Psilocybin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybin). The word "psychedelic" (coined by British psychologist Humphrey Osmond (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humphrey_Osmond)) means "mind manifesting". By that definition all artistic efforts to depict the inner world of the psyche may be considered "psychedelic". However, in common parlance "Psychedelic Art" refers above all to the art movement of the 1960's counterculture. Psychedelic visual arts were a counterpart to psychedelic rock music (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelic_rock). Concert posters, Album covers, lightshows, murals, comic books, underground newspapers and more reflected not only the kaleidoscopically swirling patterns of LSD hallucinations, but also revolutionary political, social and spiritual sentiments inspired by insights derived from these psychedelic states of consciousness.
Leading proponents of the Psychedelic Art movement were San Francisco poster artists such as: Rick Griffin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Griffin), Victor Moscoso (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Moscoso), Stanley Mouse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Mouse) & Alton Kelley (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alton_Kelley&action=edit), and Wes Wilson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wes_Wilson). Their Psychedelic Rock concert posters were inspired by Art Nouveau, Victoriana, Dada, and Pop Art. Richly saturated colors in glaring contrast, elaborately ornate lettering, strongly symmetrical composition, collage elements, and bizarre iconography are all hallmarks of the San Francisco psychedelic poster art style. The style flourished from about 1966 - 1972. Their work was immediately influential to album cover art, and indeed all of the aforementioned artists also created album covers.
Yet psychedelic album cover art was more international: Majorca based painter Mati Klarwein (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mati_Klarwein) created psychedelic masterpieces for Miles Davis' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_Davis) Jazz-Rock fusion albums, and also for Carlos Santana (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Santana) Latin Rock. Pink Floyd (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Floyd) worked extensively with London based designers, Hipgnosis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipgnosis) to create graphics to support the concepts in their albums.
Psychedelic light-shows were a new art-form developed for rock concerts. Using oil and dye in an emulsion that was set between large convex lenses upon overhead projectors the lightshow artists created bubbling liquid visuals that pulsed in rhythm to the music. This was mixed with slideshows and film loops to create an improvisational motion picture art form to give visual representation to the improvisational jams of the rock bands and create a completely "trippy" atmosphere for the audience. The Brotherhood of Light (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brotherhood_of_Light) were responsible for many of the light-shows in San Francisco psychedelic rock concerts.
Out of the psychedelic counterculture also arose a new genre of comic books: "Underground Comix". "Zap Comix" was the original underground comic and featured the work of R. Crumb, S. Clay Wilson, Victor Moscoso, Rick Griffin, and Robert Williams among others. Underground Comix were ribald, intensely satirical, and seemed to pursue weirdness for the sake of weirdness. Gilbert Shelton (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Shelton) created perhaps the most enduring of underground cartoon characters, "The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fabulous_Furry_Freak_Brothers)", whose drugged out exploits held a hilarious mirror up to the hippy lifestyle of the 1960's.
Psychedelic art was also applied to the LSD itself. LSD began to be put on blotter paper in the early 1970's and this gave rise to a specialized art form of decorating the blotter paper. Often the blotter paper was decorated with tiny insignia on each perforated square tab, but by the 1990's this had progressed to complete four color designs often involving an entire page of 900 or more tabs. Mark McCloud (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mark_McCloud&action=edit) is a recognized authority on the history of LSD blotter art.
The fact that LSD blotter art kept evolving over decades shows that the Psychedelic Art movement did not end with the '60's, and if considered more deeply it did not begin in that decade either. The use of drugs by artists is nothing new - the Roman poet Ovid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovid) said, "There is no poetry among water drinkers." However, since drugs have always been taboo, the drug use of artists has not always entered the historical record. It was part of the youth rebellion of the 1960's to openly use drugs, but the psychedelic drugs were also seen in a different light from more traditional inebriants such as opiates, cocaine and alcohol. LSD was a new invention that had shown wondrous promise as a psychiatric medicine. It is beyond the scope of this article to describe LSD research and its various results, but importantly to the counterculture movement of the 1960's it had been strongly demonstrated to be an enhancer of creativity and a gateway to mystical experience. These aspects drew artists and intellectuals to experiment with LSD and other psychedelic drugs.
Early artistic experimentation with LSD was conducted in a clinical context by Los Angeles based psychiatrist Oscar Janiger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Janiger). Janiger had a group of 50 different artists each do a painting from life of a subject of the artist's choosing. Then they were asked to do the same painting while under the influence of LSD. The two paintings were compared by Janiger and also the artist. The artist's almost unanimously reported LSD to be an enhancement to their creativity.
Beatnik poets such as Allen Ginsberg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Ginsberg) and William S. Burroughs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Burroughs) were certainly aware of LSD and other psychedelics during the 1950's. The beatniks understood the role of psychedelics as sacred inebriants in native american cultures, and also had an understanding of the philosophy of the surrealist and symbolist poets who called for a "complete disorientation of the senses" (to paraphrase Arthur Rimbaud (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Rimbaud)). They knew of the altered states of consciousness that were essential to Eastern Mysticism. LSD was the perfect catalyst to electrify the eclectic mix of ideas assembled by the beatniks into a cathartic panacea for the succeeding generation.
While LSD and the other psychedelics were criminalized in 1966, and psychedelics research was brought to a halt, psychedelia entered the popular culture and for decades to come influenced Hollywood, Madison Ave, and perhaps even more consequentially Silicon Valley.
Computer Arts have allowed for an even greater and more profuse expression of psychedelic vision. Fractal generating software gives an accurate depiction of psychedelic hallucinatory patterns, but even more importantly 2D and 3D graphics software allow for unparalleled freedom of image manipulation. Much of the graphics software seems to enable a direct translation of the psychedelic vision. The "digital revolution" was indeed heralded early on as the "New LSD" by none other then Timothy Leary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Leary).
The Rave movement of the 1990's was a psychedelic renaissance fueled by the advent of newly available digital technologies. The rave movement developed a new graphic art style partially influenced by 1960's psychedelic poster art, but also strongly influenced by graffiti art, and by 1970's advertising art, yet clearly defined by what computer graphics software and home computers had to offer at the time of creation.
Concurrent to the rave movement, and in key respects integral to it, are the development of new mind altering drugs, most notably, MDMA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDMA) (Ecstasy). Ecstasy, like LSD, has had a tangible influence on culture and aesthetics, particularly the aesthetics of Rave Culture. But MDMA is (arguably) not a real psychedelic, but is described by psychologists as an "empathogen". Development of new psychedelics such as "2CB (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2CB)" and related compounds (developed primarily by chemist Alexander Shulgin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Shulgin) are truly psychedelic, and these novel psychedelics are fertile ground for artistic exploration since many of the new psychedelics possess their own unique properties that will affect the artist's vision accordingly.
Perhaps the future of psychedelic art will be defined by those artist's who have practiced it most purely. That is to say by those artist's who have sought to record the visions derived from the psychedelic drug experience into works of art. Even as fashions have changed, and art and culture movements have come and gone certain artists have steadfastly devoted themselves to psychedelia. Well known examples are Alex Grey (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Grey) and Robert Venosa (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Robert_Venosa&action=edit). These artists have developed unique and distinct styles that while containing elements that are obviously "psychedelic", are clearly artistic expression that transcend simple categorization. While it is not necessary to use psychedelics to arrive at such a stage of artistic development, serious psychedelic artists are demonstrating that there is tangible technique to obtaining visions, and that technique is the creative use of psychedelic drugs.

[furst]

I remember reading that he use's weed and blindfolds to help his ideas

500 microdots of acid seems to make more sense to me.

It's sick art, but not my favorite. It isn't eerie enough.

[AerosolGuerilla]

thats some real nice shit

[Horus]

gaylord hippy shit

[Max_Power]

gaylord hippy shit

BUMP

[Streetie]

sasha grey is a hottie