Art
Views of Aleph Sanctuary
The painting "Views of Aleph Sanctuary" by Mati Klarwein, 1963-1971 (re-created in 2004), is another modern work of art that was painted during the time in America called the "Psychedelic Era." This painting, with its many different details and weird beings really shows how drugs can affect a painter. Like many artists, Klarwein used very unusual materials to create this work. He used aluminum, Plexiglas, and fluorescent tubes to help make the design, and the lights help backlight the work and make it look like the sun is shining through stained glass.
The colors in this work are bright, almost like cartoons, and the figures and animals in the art are cartoonish, too. Some of the squares just hold symmetrical designs, while others show scenes of people and nature. They all have an unreal quality to them, which helps make them seem more like a comic book than real life. The work looks like you are looking up into the ceiling of a church, but the scenes make it clear that you are not. The sanctuary is actually made up of many different paintings and works that Klarwein did during his life, and it seems some of them change or mature as they grow older. Many of the people in the paintings are not people at all, but magical beings that seem like they could only live in a picture like this. Some of them look like fairies and other gentle creatures, and there are always lots of flowers and landscaping around them to try to make the scene more real.
This work is so detailed it is hard to take it all in at once. It seems like you could view it again and again and always see something new and different. It is so detailed that it must have taken the artist a very long time to create each of the different pieces. It makes me wonder where artists get their ideas, and how this artist kept coming up with so many vivid pictures. I would call this art "weird," but there is something very interesting about it, too.
