We live in an age of upset and turmoil. I am referring here not to current events and politics, but to ethics, spirituality, philosophy, culture and science. Our religious institutions have brought us perpetual death, our sciences wage war on our health and well-being, our ethics do not reflect our needs. Each of these institutions professes that it will cure the problems that they in fact cause. And when the cure comes, it is accompanied by a host of new problems. We find that Reason has failed us. Our institutions have left us destitute. We are drowning in a sea of materialism and perpetual discontent. How many of my generation consume and consume in the effort to fill that emptiness which nothing will satisfy? Given our current spiritual state, it is no mystery why America is the worldís greatest consumer: we are trying to fill a bottomless pit.
The art of the day is equally frantic, confused, and despairing. Breeze quickly through any compendium of Post-modernism, and there it is: unending despair. The art that is warning the world of impending crisis is largely ignored by a public that has buried its head in the sand of some new form of romanticism.
Coronation is not of this general despair. I too see the storm rising, but the time for heralding its approach is long gone. My art represents the affirmation of life apart from that terrible storm. I am establishing an art of triumph and conquest. I give you affirmation rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair. I bring you light in the darkness. The people will need genuine spiritual leadership in the times to come, and I am one of the prophets. Artists see past the dire consequences of our follies. We are the ones who will be there with outstretched hand to pull you out of the maelstrom.
Coronation is an act of triumph. Humans occupy the most fascinating position in the universe and artists occupy one position above thatówe are the universe peering into itself. We look hard into the nothing. We feel a compulsion to bring light to our fellow humans who are not blessed with vision. We are the ones who embrace the terrors and delights of life. This is our plight, but it is a plight that we relish. It is our plight and joy. Coronation is that joy in the face of the nothing. Coronation is the coronation of humanity in its conquest of itself and its gods. It is perpetual triumph in the cycle of love and hate, of life and death, of being and nothing.