Thanks very much indeed for this so interesting lecture.

Beware viewers! Don't be led astray! Don't let your minds run over your experience! Listening to the over intellectualization of paintings that i (in awe) accidentally stumbled upon in my youth with still innocent eyes and now hearing this mind numbing talk even now taints my once near religious experience of these paintings. I was a 17 year old precocious painter studying in D.C. at Corcoran Inst./in art galleries/and with other local contemporary painters on private scholarships unknown to me at the time. I would often go see these paintings by myself in galleries empty even of guards. This was my church. I may be one of few to have been so fortunate to have had this experience therefore i share it with you... In an open state I would approach these massive paintings with my heart/mind in a combination of reverence/emptiness/focus/surrender/play. Sometimes I would sit on the floor in the middle of the room and just stare and let the colors/forms come into me 'only for what they were'. Or i would stand very close and be infused.... or slowly walk by very close to the canvas and see the pure colors passing by only 'for what they were'. Sometimes i would spontaneously start giggling and then laughing with sheer joy... or my experiential approach would bring me close to dance because i was moved. I never once degenerated into the thought of "what does it mean?' I reject the viewing with mind/projected/overlay/interpretation/ hyped up intellectualization onto works that can be enjoyed so simply by everyone. Please do not bring the references to the p(olitical) word into my sacred space. This same talking head hype in the later 60's and the hurried introduction of flash pop art commercialization upstaging much deeper contemplative meditative works widely unseen or grasped at that time was what moved me in disgust to terminate my hopes for the future of my life in art. Though I loved my art filled and inspired life... political turmoil also played a hand against me (as in Vietnam War) in undermining my personal dreams as a highly talented artist. I went underground and am still there doing my work 'from myself for myself' in hiding/obscurity much like Morris Louis did through most of his career. Notice how when Alexander's talk comes to an end no-one has the nerve to ask a question? I think the way they (authorities) talk over the heads of their audience is an intimidation tactic that gives their lives meaning. The talk was too heady for work that does not call for it. Notice when the audience finally got the nerve to speak they did not do it within the context of the talk. Rather they began to question his thinking and exert their own opinions? I do not at all wish to offend Alexander Nemerov. I do hope he and you all will be so fortunate as to have the experience that I had of letting your eyes simply see without your mind stealing your direct experience. If you hit a block you might try the aid of some mushrooms but you may find yourself crawling on the floor and now there are guards that don't like that. Please seek out other good painters of the 'D.C. Color School' and beyond. A few i would recommend... Rothko, Poons, Olitski, Gilliam, Davis and Equally Competent Others whose names and recognition may have unfortunately slipped away. I have been trying but cannot find them. Enjoy yourselves. I love you art lovers.

It's just colorful lines on canvas that looks nice. That's all it is Alexander, nothing more. You go so so so far in your ideas and trying to give meaning to this, that it makes things look worse!

In my view he was a wonderful painter, but in no sense was he the "Court Painter of the Kennedy Era."

chmess