Transfigurations

Book excerpt: The most extensive collection of Grey’s visionary artwork and life’s journey in one volume • Includes a foreword by Albert Hofmann and essays on Grey’s work by renowned art critic Donald Kuspit, philosopher Ken Wilber, and Stephen Larsen, author of Joseph Campbell: A Fire in the Mind • 21,000 sold in hardcover since October 2001 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. Transfigurations, the follow-up to Grey’s Sacred Mirrors (1991)--one of the most successful art books of the 1990s--includes all of Grey’s major works completed in the following decade, including the masterful seven-paneled altarpiece Nature of Mind, called “the grand climax of Grey’s art” by Donald Kuspit. His portrayals of human beings blend anatomical exactitude with visionary depictions of universal life energy. Alex Grey’s striking artwork leads us on the soul’s journey from material world encasement to recovery of the divinely illuminated core.