Recognize

This incredible book is the first of all of Glen E. Friedman's books to not use anything from his past archives of infamous iconic images. It is based solely upon his most recent artistic studies and ambition. This new book, RECOGNIZE has far reaching implications on the world of modern art.As quoted from the books preface and afterward:"Glen E. Friedman's mission with RECOGNIZE is no less than 're-aligning the aesthetic' or demolishing and then re-making the rules by which we view and understand art... The re-introduction of sight into art-making and art-seeing, away from purely conceptual in-jokes and toward formal problems of light, composition and beauty. Just as Renaissance artists re-introduced the classical world's honesty and discipline to art-making, Friedman restores picture-taking to its primary and vital function: composition of the natural world, combined with a sense of wonder at the magnificence of what is all around us."- Ian Folke Svenonius, 2005"With access to a decent shelf of art books one could easily align Glen E. Friedman's work with a golden chain of initiatic transmission in Western art. This sublime aesthetic incorporates, say, Correggio at one end and Turner at the other; perhaps also in a sense the late Monet of the lily ponds...These photos are more pleasurable than one might expect because they are secretly more painful. They hide an aesthetic shock behind what first appears to be more picturesque nebulosity. They sneak up on you, gradually becoming more and more sexual, more uncomfortable. It's customary nowadays to claim we "distrust beauty" because it has betrayed us. In fact the reverse is true: our culture betrays beauty and then blames it for its lack of depth. On this edge Glen's work is dancing - hence its vertiginousness, its touch of vertigo. Real beauty is always serious."- Peter Lamborn Wilson, 2005