ANOTHER BOOK PUBLISHED

So hysterically happy to see my art in a new publication graced with incredible texts by Sir Roger Scruton who wrote a sublime manuscript called The Point of Intersection of the Timeless with Time and other texts by Julian Spalding who is I believe the John Ruskin of our times and many other illuminated minds that I had the immense privilege to share the Fellowship with in the monastery of the Fondation Cini. Jacob Burda and Alan Lawson have created what is the highest cultural circle in Europe today where High Art and High Philosophy meet to create the future of Art. Like the president of the Foundation Cini Pasquale Gagliardi told me eloquently two days ago quoting Gustav Mahler, what we care about is ''the Fire of Tradition''. To follow the thought of Gustav Mahler, we are Adoring the fire and not the ashes. The Alpine Fellowship makes it every year more and more clear to the world that the Golden Age of culture is not lost. We will regain the right for art to be deep and sublime.

FOUNDATION CINI : TO REMETAPHYSIZE ART

I am most delighted to be invited to the Foundation Cini in Venice.  For the third year in a row, as an artist, I will be joining the distinguished Alpine Fellowship.  I am honored and humbled to be part of this cloister of extraordinary minds.To bring back philosophers and artists together is one of the most important task for our civilization today. Philosophy and Art together will remetaphysize art and that is exactly what is needed and it is what I am trying to do in sculpture since 20 years.Did I say art ? No I meant Art this activity that use to be civilization-defining since 7000 years. I can't wait to see you my friends...

THE KNIGHTHOOD OF ROGER SCRUTON

Yesterday Saturday June 11 2016 was a special day for Philosophy and Art. Roger Scruton will be knighted by the Queen of England for her 90th Birthday. I had the privilege to share the same fellowship with Roger and each time it was a delight of elegance and intelligence.

Inside Aldourie Castle in the home of George Watts, the symbolist painter, surrounded by the red tapestries, a fake door hidden behind a painting and an original death mask of William Blake, I remember asking him if he knew why the magnificent poet Holderlin became crazy and he responded as we say in french with fulgurance ''that is what happens to the best of us." It is always an admirable emotion when you hear the answer coming out of the mind of this great man, which you yourself have in your own mind. 

One night we were all sitting in the tea room by the Lochness, all of us sarcophaged in dignity - I remember thinking... there should be a specimen of a spine from the sacrum to the ossified vertebras up to the last vertebras of an Oxford student in a bell jar inside the Museum of Natural History of every country, to show the world what dignification means.

I saw him again a year later at the Foundation Cini as I was presenting my movie on sculpture in which the nucleus of my philosophy was out in the world for the first time.  At night, after the projection of the movie, he broke from the group and kindly found me outside the convent where we were all in black tie waiting for the rivas to take us to dinner on a floating Palazzo to tell me how much he enjoyed the movie. 

He said this with a radiant benevolence. 

Yesterday it is not Roger Scruton who has been knighted, it is Benevolence and Philosophy that has been knighted. Dear Roger you were already a knight...

The Congregation of the Extraordinary Minds

ARTICLE IN THE SPECTATOR

THE POST-CONTEMPORARY AVANT-GARDE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-i12aFRfE4&feature=youtu.be

Roger Scruton Lecture at the Fellowship

http://digiqualia.com/lecture/roger-scruton/

A Conversation on Transcendence between Roger Scruton and Marc Vinciguerra painted by Alan Lawson

A Historical Week-End

From left to right : Tao Ruspoli, Zach Kramer, Moray Welsh, Andreas Birath, Casey Larson, Andrew Huddelston, Marc Vinciguerra, Alan J Lawson, Jacob L Burda, Taylor Carmen, Lana Svirejeva-Hopkins, Rachel Personnet, Roger Scruton, Sam Hughes, Harry Eyres, Peter Trippi, Christopher Fynsk, Anne Wollke, Deryn Rees-Jones, Carl Korsnes

WINNER OF THE 2014 ALPINE FELLOWSHIP

I am honored to have won the 2014 Alpine Fellowship that will happen this year in a castle in Scotland. I look forward to share thoughts and perspective about Art , Religion , Atheology and Illuminism and why this four forces are meeting in the 21 century in the history of Art which I eagerly separate from the history of Anti-Art. I am thrilled to join the discussion with this group of scholars from Oxford University and Columbia University and professors of aesthetic one of which is one of England greatest philosopher  Roger Scruton , author of this wonderful show on the BBC '' Why Beauty Matters ''. In my opinion this group is the brain of the Avant-garde. I am delighted to have won this prize and I look forward to spend time with such beautiful minds.