We’re artists. We’re alchemists. We’re magicians. Playing drinking games with the elixir of life. Designing slingshots for the philosopher’s stone. Maybe you saw us walking through downtown LA on Saturday, January 21 for the Women’s March, or peering at medieval manuscripts at The Art of Alchemy, now on view at the Getty Center until February 12. The mind of separation says these two events are different — marching for equality and human rights vs. strolling through a museum exhibition. Mysticism says that they are not, that even you and the multiverse are the same.
Does this mean in essence you are only doing one thing your entire life? We would say yes. You are living. But that is not for us to say — for you. You can answer that yourself. The questions keep us going, as they did for the alchemists of Europe, Egypt, and Asia who the Getty Research Institute says were driven “to transform and bend nature to the will of an industrious human imagination. For scientists, philosophers, and artists alike, alchemy seemed to hold the key to unlocking the secrets of creation.”
You have three days to see their written and illustrated works at the Getty Research Institute, if not for these philosophical concerns then simply for their art. You don’t need a background in art history, alchemy, anything. You just need to keep asking questions.
That’s the only thing we ask of you.
For now.
— Q.D. from Culver City
Ξ
Art and magic are no different. But we are.
People Without Names 