KNOX MARTIN: GALLANT LOVER OF WOMEN

 KNOX MARTIN  WOMAN WITH CAMERA acrylic on canvas 80″X65″

        At his prime, Knox Martin was so handsome looking and physically fit that he won the title for Mr. America. Master Knox Martin is a gallant lover of women and is in turn loved by women.

       The sweeping brushstrokes of this painting shows the power of the master at its height. The greatness of Knox Martin partly resides in the fact that he has created a whole new paradigm for painting.  

 KNOX MARTIN DANCER ACRYLIC ON CANVAS 80″X65

The color combination of this painting is extremely striking and its movement in the composition is very much in tune with that of a dancer in reality. The longer you look at a Knox Martin painting, the more enticing it would become, as if the communion and the conversation would only begin after the initial acquaintance with the painting has fully matured into friendship.

 

   

 KNOX MARTIN WOMAN WITH STILL LIFE    Acrylic on canvas

80″X65″

If you can identify the metaphors for the eyes, the nose, the lips, the breasts, the hand, in short, the body of a woman, you would be much better equipped with the ability to enjoy a Knox Martin painting beyond the apparently abstract forms or their interactions therein. You would even find out why I talk about this “whole new paradigm of painting” being created through this venerable and resourceful master. 

 

    

KNOX MARTIN  FLORA  Acrylic on canvas 80″X65″

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      I first saw this painting at a friend’s condominium. The original work was 80X65″ and its size increase the visual impact upon a viewer many times over. It came down upon me like a blessing from on high, giving a majestic look as well as a sublime feel. It was so engaging that I could not keep my eyes off it the entire evening I was there! The memory of that night is forever forged in my mind because it was a magical moment!

       In my opinion, nothing could quite surpass it in its glamour and magnificence in Modern Art! It commands great respect in every Alpha Seer who can truly gauge its artistic merits. 

Discussion and critique:

      Contemprary art critics like Danto and others have failed to decipher Knox Martin’s true contribution and often assume that this master derives his method and style from “Abstract Expressionsim.” Wrong from the start! There is nothing abstract about Knox Martin’s paintings.

       “Abstract” to any reasoning individual means certain man-made marks designated as aesthetical forms or their mutual formal interaction thereof, produced in such a way that the image as a result has no bearing to a real life object from which a metaphor can be meditated and construed. In other words, they are the so-called “pure forms” loaded with various meanings or symbolisms understood by none beyond the author himself. Abstract forms are not the painterly representation of real life objects. For example, the Blue Nude by Matisse is understood universally as a metaphor of a seated nude woman in real life. On the contrary, abstract forms do not refer to any object in real life.

       Not unlike Matisse, Knox Martin draws and paints from real life.Through his many innovations and various radical changes initiated in his representations of real-life objects, not only is the “figure-ground” dichotomy bought under serious scrutiny (as it is basically a lie fabricated by those who are blind to true art or who are too weak-minded to understand it), but Painting has also taken many steps closer to home–where calligraphic and poetic freedom may be exercised at will by the master.

       That freedom can only have been engendered by the master called Knox Martin, born and die with him. Because of that properties, Painting is now once again shown to be one with Calligraphy, Poetry, and Music.

       The consequence in seeing that one-ness , i.e. the unity of the various disciplines coming under the great banner of Art, allows us to witness also the absurdity in the assumption that “isms” or ” artistic movements”  can automatically “develop” from one form or style of art to another, propagated by subsequent imitators subject to the theories of a particular school of thought in Art! 

       Imposture in art must be more constant than the oldest profession in the world as million of people feed off Art more ferociously than Prostitution off Sex: thousands in Academia, many more in the media, hundreds of museum directors, hordes of art critics, swarms of art dealers, countless con-artists masquerading as the True Ones ( e.g. Andy Warhol, Marshall Duchamp, Jim Dine, Christo, Witkin, etc.) –not that they give  a damn about Art or understand it, but because of their own blindness and impotence, they are pushed into a life of crime: they are sworn to exploit the blindness of the lay people, thereby fattening their guts and oiling their pricks at our expenses. As I am penning this I can almost sense a slight nausea upon an image in which millions of maggots were feeding frantically at a vast pool of fecal matter. That flashback from an impression many years ago in rural China suddenly acquires a life of its own and becomes animated with the jaws, claws and paws of those shit-worms.

        In Knox Martin’s paintings we are told that there are no followers in Art. There is only the master. Either one is the master or he is not–there is no middle ground in that enterprise.

       A master is born of Nature–NEVER trained of schools! A  master is a law unto himself, a light unto himself, and eventually, a universe unto himself, born of himself and die unto himself! A master is not beholden to a greater source before him, neither has he a precursor in the past nor an offspring in the future.   

 Ben Taishing Lau