Product Description

Ten years of visionary artwork from a rare artist embraced by critics, spiritual leaders, and the general public during his lifetime. * Includes essays on Grey's work by the renowned art critic Donald Kuspit and by Stephen Larsen, author of Fire in the Mind: The Authorized Biography of Joseph Campbell. * The long-awaited follow-up to Sacred Mirrors, which has sold more than 50,000 copies and has appeared in five languages.

Every once in a great while an artist emerges who does more than simply reflect the social trends of the time. These artists are able to transcend established thinking and help us redefine ourselves and our world. Today, a growing number of art critics, philosophers, and spiritual seekers believe they have found that vision in the art of Alex Grey.

Transfigurations is the eagerly awaited follow-up to Sacred Mirrors, one of the most successful art books of the 1990s. It includes all of Grey's major works completed in the past decade, including the masterful seven-paneled altarpiece Nature of Mind, called "the grand climax of Grey's art" by Donald Kuspit. Grey's portrayals of human beings blend scientific exactitude with visionary depictions of universal life energy, leading us on the soul's journey from material world encasement to recovery of our divinely illuminated core.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #68543 in Books
• Published on: 2001-10
• Released on: 2001-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 176 pages

Review
"...not merely symbolic or imaginary...a direct invitation to recognize and realize a deeper dimension of our very own being." -- Ken Wilber, author of Integral Psychology and The Eye of Spirit

A beautiful, unusual work. -- The Midwest Book Review, May 2002

Alex Grey is making some of the most beautifully refined imagist work in the country today. -- Walter Hopps, senior curator, Guggenheim Museum and Menil Collection

Grey brings us an ever-deepening visual contemplation on the nature of personal and transpersonal identity. -- Bodhi Tree Bookstore, Winter 2002/Spring 2003

Grey's vision...[is] an antidote to the cynicism and spiritual malaise prevalent in much contemporary art." -- New York Times

Review
"Grey's work, like all great transcendental art, is not merely symbolic or imaginary: it is a direct invitation to recognize and realize a deeper dimension of our very own being."
(Ken Wilber, author of Integral Psychology and The Eye of Spirit )

"Grey's vision of a flawed but perfectible mankind stands as an antidote to the cynicism and spiritual malaise prevalent in much contemporary art."
(New York Times )

"Alex Grey is making some of the most beautifully refined imagist work in the country today."
(Walter Hopps, senior curator, Guggenheim Museum and Menil Collection )

"Grey brings us an ever-deepening visual contemplation on the nature of personal and transpersonal identity."
(Bodhi Tree Bookstore, Winter 2002/Spring 2003 )

"Grey's portrayals of human beings blend scientific exactitude with visionary depictions of universal life energy....a rare artist embraced by critics, spiritual leaders, and the general public during his lifetime. Grey's art leads us on a transformative journey through the darkness of the material world to the divinely illumined core....an ever-deepening visual contemplation on the nature of personal and transpersonal identity."
(

SirReadaLot.org, Oct. 1, 2004

)

"As much about the mysteries of the life as it is about the creative process, Transfigurations displays the mind, spirit, and soul of the artist in a way that defies traditions of dryly worded art books or demure coffee table decorations. . . . I am treasuring this book, keeping it on my shelf and opening its pages when I need inspiration."
(Diana Rajchel, The Beltane Papers, Mar 2006 )

"A beautiful, unusual work."
(The Midwest Book Review, May 2002 )

From the Back Cover
ART

“Grey’s vision of a flawed but perfectible mankind stands as an antidote to the cynicism and spiritual malaise prevalent in much contemporary art.”
The New York Times

“Alex Grey’s art will bring you face to face with your soul and move you to a new level of enlightenment.”
Deepak Chopra, author of The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success

“Alex Grey is making some of the most beautifully refined imagist work in the country today.”
Walter Hopps, senior curator, Guggenheim Museum and Menil Collection

“Grey’s work, like all great transcendental art, is not merely symbolic or imaginary: it is a direct invitation to recognize and realize a deeper dimension of our very own being.”
Ken Wilber, author of The Simple Feeling of Being

Every once in a great while an artist emerges who does more than simply reflect the social trends of the time. Such an artist is able to transcend established thinking and help us redefine ourselves and our world. Today, a growing number of art critics, philosophers, and spiritual seekers believe that they have found that vision in the art of Alex Grey.

Grey’s art leads us on a transformative journey through the opacity and darkness of the material world to the recovery of our divinely illumined core. Images of becoming, of existential pain, search and confusion, love, death, and transcendence are icons in the long corridors of Grey’s creative odyssey. From his earliest self-portraits and paintings of skeletons, to his most recent universal beings gridded with fire and eyes, Grey brings us an ever-deepening visual contemplation on the nature of personal and transpersonal identity.

Transfigurations is a continuation of the dialogue between body and soul begun in Grey’s first book Sacred Mirrors--one of the most successful art books of the 1990s. Transfigurations includes all of Grey’s major works completed in the following decade, presented here in 202 color reproductions and 93 black-and-white images. These works include the masterful seven-paneled Buddhist altarpiece Nature of Mind; World Soul, a bronze sculpture of a divine being that symbolically encompasses all realms of consciousness; and Cosmic Christ, a vision of Christ that embraces all religions and the countless dimensions of the universe.

An essay by renowned author and transpersonal psychologist Stephen Larsen provides a biographical sketch of the artist’s creative process, struggling with his demons and glimpsing the light of the beyond within. Grey’s early forays into dark, transgressive performance art and his later theophanic installations are all documented in a special twenty-page performance section. Art critic Donald Kuspit elucidates Grey’s primary subject, mystical light, as it manifests through his unique approach to the human figure. A conversation between noted philosopher Ken Wilber and the artist explores the exciting possibilities of art serving as a vehicle for transformation. Albert Hofmann, the chemist who discovered LSD, writes the foreword that places Grey’s work at the conjunction of science and mysticism.

Grey’s paintings offer the viewer unforgettable glimpses of transfiguration, as bodies become translucent to the light of Spirit, transparent to the ground of being. The occurrence of beholding and becoming “the light” is a phenomenon that is described in all religions and wisdom paths. Grey’s “X-ray” visions show the complex interplay of the anatomical body and the glowing subtle energies of the soul, unveiling the relationship between our finite self and infinite spirit. Grey’s quest is toward an integrative art that visually unites body, mind, soul, and spirit and helps heal the alienation and fragmentation felt between the individual and the world.

ALEX GREY is the author of Sacred Mirrors: The Visionary Art of Alex Grey and The Mission of Art. His work has been exhibited around the world, including at the New Museum and Stux Gallery in New York City, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the Grand Palais in Paris, the São Paulo Biennial, and the ARK exhibition space in Tokyo. His art has also been featured in venues as diverse as album covers for the Beastie Boys, Nirvana, and Tool; Newsweek magazine; and the Discovery Channel. He lives in New York with his wife, artist Allyson Grey, and their daughter, actress Zena Grey.

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Customer Reviews

Grey grows up
I have possessed a slightly beaten-up copy of Alex Grey's first book, Sacred Mirrors, since it was released, and I waited anxiously for Transfigurations to come out. Let me warn everyone: it is a book with a different message and focus than Mirrors. However, it is a message than many of us need to hear. This book focuses more on Grey's development as an artist, with an informative opening section on Grey's artwork through the years. It really gives meaning to his art to see the fruits of his confrontations with his "dark side" early on, and to see what those insights have contributed to the art he produces today. These pieces seem more personal than those in Mirrors, with Grey depicting families, birth, and his young daughter in his trademark hyper-realistic, transparent-skin style. He also includes some of his poems, which accompany a multi-part piece on the journey of the soul. Grey's earlier pieces tended to depict kisses, sex, or deities--universal themes we can all relate to. This book finds him paiting "headaches" or "despair" with the same insight he devotes to more upbeat subjects. Overall this is a great book, illustrating how Grey has grown as an artist over the years. If you are searching for just another "trip-book" on the order of his first publication, this may not be what you're looking for. But for me, it was an enriching view of what Grey's art is becoming as he, like many of us, tries to reconcile a transcendental and psychedelic worldview with a comforting and stable family life.

A New Gift From one of America's Great Artists
What a treat a new collection of images from Alex Grey is.
This new book, following his original Sacred Mirrors, is an eyeful of wonder, magic, luminosity, and to borrow from Mircea Eliade, the spiritual philosopher, NUMINOSITY-- visions of the sacred, mystical and, paradoxically, of the unknowable.

In this beautifully rendered book, Alex Grey takes you to his newest visions and also to his fascinating roots. There are very few people who have followed his path. It is no wonder that he has such an amazing group of people (Albert Hoffman, Ken Wilber, Stephen Larsen) contributing to his book.

This is not your typical beautiful art book. It will fill you up, as many an art book can, but it will also lift you, and offer you a kaleidoscope of visions, or more precisely, ways of looking at the world.

the book also includes some images of Alex's dream project, the creation of a sacred space where his sacred mirrors series can be properly displayed. I have a feeling that when it completed, it will evoke feelings similar to those one experiences when entering Notre Dame, the Blue Mosque, (been to them) or the Pyramids.

Art and Spirit for all of Mankind.
This well printed, well bound, book contains stunningly beautiful and provocative spiritual imagery that resonates with the truth within us. But anyone who has seen Mr. Grey's work before has come to expect this from him.

The real treat is that the pages contain an incredible amount of intensely interesting background information (and tons of photos!) on Alex's early works, as well as insightful commentaries by Albert Hoffmann, Stephen Larsen, Donald Kuspit, and Ken Wilber.

I have to say... I bought my copy at a higher price directly from Alex Grey's website (...). It showed up a few days after ordering, smelling of freshly printed ink, nicely wrapped and (best of all!) signed by Alex Grey.

While it is true that Alex Grey's most recent book celebrates the Journey within all of us, it also offers the reader the opportunity to be subtly transformed by the power of the imagery and lyrical writing contained within - something that we can all benefit from during these disturbing days and into the uncertain ones to come.

For this reader, the most exciting aspect of this book is the announcement of Alex Grey's plan to build a Chapel to house the Sacred Mirrors.

I have no doubt that this Chapel will be one of the wonders of our age.

May God Bless Alex, Allyson, and Zena Grey and give them all the strength, luck, and power to support each other into the distant years to come.

- G.F.