Updated 2 weeks ago
Alex Grey is a New York-based visionary art icon that became well known especially in the 1990s and 2000s and has established the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors to exhibit his art in upstate New York. I will detail my personal history with him, which has been largely very positive, in the same way that when asked about LSD-induced deaths, such as Art Linklater’s daughter jumping to her death, Leary said that one you take all the positive and negative factors, the positive outweighed the negative.
Then, I will link a new site with multiple accusations that go back to the 70s.
My History with Alex Grey
I met him and his wife, and on the surface, they were lovely people. I went to their house in the early days of the late 90s/early 2000s. There is a gallery of his visionary art on this website. His contribution to visionary art is sacrosanct; his legacy is secure.
For someone who was, at the time, taking a lot off hallucinogens, Alex Grey was visual crack. Finally – finally– someone made real the visions that I had, especially the tryptamine detail! Support for him was part of my life goals at one point. “I’m going to bring Alex Grey’s art to the world!” I told myself in 1998. I would bring his books out to events, at tables with 3D glasses, spreading the word to new people. I promoted every event he threw in Manhattan over ten years or so. Like many, I Dj’d at one of his events.
Very early on, though, piece by piece, my idealism started to dim.
The cracks began to sppear when I showed up at one of his lectures in Chelsea in 2000 wearing a T-Shirt that a Swedish friend had hand-made, as a gesture of affection commemorating a trance party in Puerto Rico.
It horrified him.
Around the same time, he refused permission for our underground trance/quasi-religious organization, the Devotional Ministry of Trance, to use part of his art in our logo.
There were many copies of his art out in the wild, and he had a distinctly antiquated view of intellectual property, and apparently, he didn’t see any difference between his loyal fans and copycat Israelis.
It gutted me. I backed off, but it killed my enthusiasm. We ended up using art incorporating the DMT molecule, and then Japanese artist Naotto Hattori, who of course had no problem.
But the previous examples were simply arcane intellectual property squabbles that could be papered over if you squint, but the problem started to snowball as he interacted with the underground art and music scene.
A bit later, he insisted on enlisting a woman I knew that had mental problems, specifically schizophrenia. I very firmly and clearly tried to warn him, noting she was an impending train wreck, and she should stay well away from him and psychedelics, which were ruining her life. This was cruel. She would call him up in the middle of the night, when he was in bed with his wife, obsessing over him. But he was like, “any help we can get the better.” That ended when she held a fundraiser for him, picked him up in a limo(!), only to find out the fundraiser was in a Manhattan deli. The woman lost her phone, so she had all the deli workers strip searched.
It wasn’t all negative weirdness. Around 2008 I even hooked up with the mother of my child en route to one of his events on 27th street. We were all tipsy. About 50 feet before a police drunk stop, I heroically switched seats to take the DWI. I became a hero to her. She ended up very pregnant with my son. You could say, in a small but discernible way, he owes his existence to Alex Grey!
But later on, the bad started piling up:
– the accusations of exploiting of gullible young worker bees,
– the “Fuck it, we have money!” $50,000 gold statue of him and his wife,
…and the (however tenuous) Paris Hilton/JP Sears affiliation made me vomit. To be fair, he does have a comical, knowing look on his face with Paris, and the rationale I suppose he needed rich celebs like her to raise money for COSM, and JP Sears hadn’t quite become the right-wing douchebag he is today. But even though, his humor was juvenile and had no place in a serious “healing” workshop. To me, it trivialized the whole direction Alex was aiming for.
Art vs Artists
Why did I continue to promote his events, knowing all this? I guess it was the well-honed habit of psychedelic scene promotion, and my belief that no one is perfect, and compromises must be made to achieve the seemingly impossible. Artists must be separated from their art, whether it’s Ingmar Bergman, Leni Reifenstahl, J.K. Rowling (I’ll never understand the “no Potter” crowd who has zero issues watching a Harvey Weinstein produced film as if you no longer collect royalties in prison), Seinfeld, Dave Chappelle, Tosh 1.0, even fucking Roger Waters….
or…
All the people the far left and far right Twitter crowd hate. Joe Rogan will never be funny though.
I don’t have a Pearl Clutching Cancel bingo card to check before I enjoy them because, well, fuck other people’s opinions.
When it comes to visionary art, this separation of an artist and his work must be re-evaluated (at the very least) as the community becomes a bigger tent. Many, shall we say, non-traditional people have have entered the psychedelic space, whether it’s pseudo-intellectual cranks like Jordan Peterson, youtubers like JP Sears, rioters like the QAon shaman, or full-on Trump supporters like visionary artist Sean Allum (whose wonderful art graces this site as well). The previous leniency should be tempered with a sober reckoning of their values and personalities. We no longer should be obligated to circle the wagons “to protect our own,” because we have cowboys and Indians everywhere now.
The Makings of a Cult
While art should be viewed separately from the artists, it’s practically impossible to extricate Alex Grey and his oevre. He’s always been grassroots, inviting crowds to his house. His studios have always been open to public participation. His whole cause célèbre has been the construction of COSM in upstate New York. Notably, he made COSM a religion to, I assume, evade property taxes, which opens a whole new can of worms. Prima facie, this is fertile ground for the seat of a spiritual guru, but personally I doubt that is the unspoken intention.
COSM helped him gain momentum; yet, this transparency comes at a price. Once you go in the back kitchen and realize how the sausage is made, the lesson here is to never put too much faith or adulation into one person because, well, even Christians acknowledge no one is righteous. No, not one. Humans suck – but gurus are a particularly heinous strain off cancer, and it’s quite possible to place so much value in one person, that even a renowned psychedelic artist can become de facto guru.
This is how cults start, and the older I get, the more skeptical I get about giving free passes because of artistic merit. We should have seen this coming way back in 1969 with Charles Manson.
I guess, bottom line, once an artist becomes so powerful they can infect lysergic minds (and wallets), they can only punch down. It’s then time for them to be taken down a notch or three. We don’t need another hero.
The Website
Thought I’d seen this before, but it’s a new website. Some friends who have worked close with Alex tell me this is just the tip of the iceberg, and that it’s worse than we could imagine. The creators behind this website are very committed to setting the record straight. There are layers and layers.
These accusations have been around for decades, and I’m not sure any of this is true and I have nothing personally against Alex Grey, but I will, publicly for the first time, share my experience over the years.
