"This use so completely assimilated of the generalized visual contrast, the most violent, the most shocking possible between the elements (so far from the seraphism of the last canvases of the previous cycle) gives to the tiny mass of textured colors, an astonishing, an extraordinary, an supernatural presence: it is thus, it is said, that illumination grabs the Zen monk who enters, like a hurricane, into the tranquility of Satori. Moreover, these canvases have a Japanese accuracy in the extreme economy of means that espouses the very essence of the movement of emerging from nowhere. In this taste, so deeply oriental, for chromatic violence, there is an explosion of exultant joy, to be contrasted with the barbaric tragic explosion which inaugurates the first cycle:

And this joy, it is also, strangely returned in this different world like a fabulous jewel in a case of night, the core, the luminous knot, become core and chromatic knot, shooting star. Expression no longer of the long and tortuous journey towards the unattainable truth, but in the dazzling singularity of the instantaneous apprehension of the truth (of value, whatever it may be) in a fleeting moment of meteoric lucidity.

No doubt Scamanga has, in approaching as near as possible to the luminous center in the recent search, realized that truth, happiness, salvation, power, ecstasy not existing until such , and that there are only flashes of ecstasy, of power, of salvation, of happiness, of truth snatched for an instant from the ocean of darkness which surrounds us to sink into it immediately. And that umaine is perhaps only a similar flash before the eternity of time, of matter, of energy, to death. And that perhaps the truth of man consists in becoming a hunter of lightning. Otherwise pure aesthetic experiences, in a mindset open to enjoyment and wonder. Because to marvel you have to perceive, but to perceive you have to

This new system of contrasts (mass, dimensions, colors, materials, movements, direction of expressive feelings) between the content and the figure in the new canvases has a coherence and an internal logic which can only be dynamic, offers the elements of a future evolutionary cyc. expressive feelings) between the content and the figure in the news tolle Basede internal logic which can only be dynamic, proposing the elements of an evolutionary future.

their artistic significance and their universal significance, impact and appeal. Each is a complete ceu, completed, closed on itself, which does not need to be apprehended and plays with no external reference to the laws which it imposes on the painted surface. Only true artists acquire this authority and this autonomy of the singular work.

Joseph
Tarrab 9/9/1974