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Alexander (1927-2023) was a British neo-expressionist/conceptual artist. His disciplines varied from stone sculpture to bronze casting, to works on canvas, to holography, and from roughly 1991 onward to combinations of those medium as well as numerous other experimental art forms. His creative objective was to expand the boundaries of contemporary art. His first one-man show was at Artist’s House in London (1950).

In 1980 he was commissioned by The Greater London Council Department for Recreation and Arts to create and produce a bronze sculpture commemorating the 25th Anniversary of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation (The Queen’s Oracle).

On Feb. 1, 1980 Alexander was commissioned by, Rutland Waters Anglian Water Authority, Well and Nene River Division to produce and install his 31’ high bronze sculpture, the “Great Tower” at Rutland Waters in Leicestershire, England.

On Oct. 10, 1980 he was commissioned by Nottinghamshire Area Health Authority South Nottingham District to produce “Duet” a two-part, ten ton Carrara marble sculpture for the entrance to University Hospital, Nottingham England,.

In 1981, seeking a way to photograph his “4-Dimensional” sculptures effectively, he became interested in the science of holography.

In 1983 he was awarded the Australia Art Council Fellowship as artist in residence for holography at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation labs (CSIRO) in Canberra, Australia. While there he worked under the tutelage of, Fellow Parameswaran Hariharan (Dr. Hariharan), and subsequently created a series of large format (3’ x 4’ or larger) holograms with imagery that projected outward as much as 28 feet from the holographic plane.

Six of Alexander’s artworks/holograms were chosen for exhibition at the World’s Fair Expo ’85 in Japan, and later that year at the Centre Pompidou,  and the Musee de l’Holographie in Paris, and for Art Bienal in Sao Paolo, Brazil for which he was Australia’s sole representative.

In 1986, Alexander created, produced, and scored the world’s first direct pulse holographic motion picture, “La Belle et Environment la Bete” at the laboratory of Professor Paul Smigielski in St.Louis, France. The film was later exhibited at “Visages de Images Holographiques, Mois de la Photo” and at the “Musee de l’Holographie” in Paris, France.

In 1989 he was awarded with the “Special Prize (for advancement in film)” for the holographic motion picture “The Dream” at the Progetto Leonardo Festival, Milan Italy.

In 1991 Alexander, as solo artist, had a retrospective exhibition at The Seoul Arts Center Museum in Seoul, Korea and then at the invitation of the Korean Government, at the Olympic Park Museum also in Seoul. Later that year his “Holo-Paintings” were a special exhibition at, “Images du Futur” in Montreal, Canada, and again at “Art Futura” in Seville, Spain.

In 1992 there was a city-wide retrospective of his art throughout London,  and later that year  a condensed version of the retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in Santa Ana, CA.

Until his passing on March 9, 2023 at the age of 96 Alexander was still actively producing artworks. He and his wife Zhanna Frid-Allen lived in Venice, California.

Formative Years - Education

Alexander was born to Florence and Morris Allen in February of 1927. He had two siblings: a brother Peter Allen (deceased) and a sister Vanessa Roberts-Allen. His first wife, Patience Yvonne Shlebert died in 1954. A brief marriage to Miriam Danielle Stonyer ended in 1998. He had three children; Geraldine Tabraham (deceased), David Allen, and Mark Allen and also a stepson, Todd Idashkin From 2005 until his passing in 2023 he was married to Zhanna Frid Allen.

Following mandatory military service Alexander attended St. Martin’s School of Arts in London, while at the same time taking classes at the Central School of Art where he studied under Victor Pasmore, who was teaching a manner of making incongruous objects coexist in harmony. His time spent with Pasmore would impact his work throughout his entire career.

He graduated simultaneously from St. Martin’s and the Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1950.

Conceptual Convergence - Art & Experiment

Alexander first came to international attention in the early 1970s’ as a sculptor and painter, and then in the 1980s’ as a holographic artist.

With the creation of his four-dimensional sculptures and his subsequent artistic experiments in holography, he further established his reputation as an experimental or conceptual artist. He invented a method for converting transmission holograms into reflection holograms. He combined holographic imagery with more traditional media such as oil or acrylic on canvas or board. “What interests me is to go beyond the limits of the real world, to create forms for those things that lie on the edge of consciousness; things that range from intuitive feelings to the ideas that have given rise to religious and spiritual beliefs in both primitive tribes and sophisticated cultures”.

Career

Alexander pursued what would be termed a varied and unconventional career unlike that of other artists of the same and later generations, and in many respects his artwork thus defies categorization. It is, in effect, a category unto itself, and for Alexander that is how it must be.

Alexander’s art is almost always experimental. When he feels he has fully explored a particular form or style of work, he leaves it for others to expound upon should they choose to do so and moves onto something else. “If I am bored, I am quite incapable of creating anything”, states Alexander. Consequently, his work is manifest in a variety of formats related mostly in abstract concept and often experimental in the utilization of space.

One of Alexander’s earliest notable works was a 6’ x 4’ acrylic painting on board entitled, “Crucifixion”, for which he made his own acrylic paints. The finished artwork was hung in a group exhibition in the crypt at St. Martin’s School and was later purchased to become the altarpiece for the school’s main chapel.

Alexander lived and worked in London for 30 years after leaving St. Martin’s. He had frequent solo exhibitions and numerous group shows. At the onset he worked with oil and acrylic on canvas. Hans Hartung, Alfred Manessier, Jean Paul Riopelle, and Pierre Soulages were his primary influences until he eventually shifted to sculpture. “Their works communicated strongly and deeply with me. It became clear that I should, no…rather that I must emphatically develop my own individual style just as did these few major and significant influences”.

Traditional Sculpture

Alexander’s ambition was always to work in three dimensions. He shifted almost entirely to sculpture in the late 1950s’. “I had to do paintings rather than sculptures for more than twenty years, and although I am known as a sculptor, I have in fact made, exhibited, and sold more paintings than sculptures”.

When the opportunity to produce sculptures came, he modelled his work after that of Sir Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth, although his actual style was neither that of either Moore or Hepworth. His early sculptures were organic as with European sculpture and geometric as with American sculpture. “I suppose it put me somewhere mid-Atlantic. I would describe my bronze, marble, and stone works from that period as being classical abstract. A characteristic that these works have in common with Moore, Hepburn, Naguchi, and a few others”.

Until the mid-1970s’ Alexander’s sculptures were modest in scale. As His confidence escalated, so too did the size of his works. He began to display a preoccupation with space and spatial relationships. At the end of the decade Alexander received a commission that set the stage for his subsequent artworks. In 1979, through the efforts of landscape architect, Dame Sylvia Crowe, Alexander was commissioned for the construction and installation of a 33’ bronze sculpture at Rutland Waters, “The Great Tower”.

After the completion of, “The Great Tower” he began to experiment with abstract forms with an open space or void at their center. He felt the idea of a material something surrounding a “nothing” at its center would be emotionally more powerful than simply a solid-form artwork. His sculptures began to show an ever-increasing tendency towards a kind of meditative mysticism, more in-line with the traditions of Chinese and Japanese art than with the art of the West.

Other large-scale pieces would soon follow, among which were numerous public commissions in urban settings such as “Jubilee Oracle” which was commissioned and produced for the 25th Silver Jubilee Anniversary of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth. It remains installed along the “Queens Walk” on the South Bank of the Thames in London. He later was commissioned for the design and installation of a ten-ton, two-part Carrara marble sculpture entitled “Duet, which was selected for the entrance into Nottingham’s University Hospital”.

Alexander’s monumental works would always be abstract, conceptual, and containing both biomorphic and geometric elements. The materials varied based upon the needs of design and circumstance. Numerous works of varying size were created in bronze, marble, granite, sandstone, and with a combination of bronze and stone. Then came Alexander’s creation of a geometrically aligned series of elongated, painted, vertical metal rods that produced a morphing, ghost-like apparition at the artwork’s center when it was rotated on axis in a circular motion. For Alexander, and although the figure generated within the sculpture’s center was more so amorphous than substantive, it did somewhat satisfy a creative desire to have two “material” objects seemingly occupy the same space at the same time.

4-Dimensional Sculpture

“We are so used to 3-dimensional space. We grew up in it, and we are surrounded by it our entire lives. What if we could change it even a little bit? Wouldn’t that be interesting? That is precisely and conceptually what took my mind away from the monumental style of sculpting I was producing from the mid-1970s’ through the early-1980s’. My immediate objective in art became to merge two different forms of 3-dimensional space into one. Following considerable experiment, I entitled the resultant imagery, 4-Dimensional Sculpture”.

The concept of four-dimensional space as discussed in the book Terbium Organum by P. D. Ouspensky, was the inspiration for Alexander’s need to create a new type of artwork. . Along with the design and structure of the artworks there were also integral elements of philosophy and visual perception.

In contradiction to the limits of conventional sculpture, which are confined to three-dimensions just as conventional forms of painting (e.g., oil or acrylic on canvas or board) are confined to two, Alexander considered the possibility of, and the structure for, a perceived 4-dimensional sculpture.

In late 1980 Alexander transitioned from marble and bronze to a form which he called four-dimensional (4D) sculpture. In January of 1981 he made the first large scale 4D artwork, which measured 10’ x 12’ x 16’. Shortly thereafter he created eleven 4D sculptures in video form and twelve in sculptured form. Both forms were exhibited at Gimpel / Weitzenhoffer in New York, and at Gimpel / Fils in London during the summer of 1982. Three of them (Carnival, 7th Movement, and Cathedral) were bought by Peter Norton, (Norton Anti-Virus) and later in 2000, donated by Norton to the Carnegie Art Museum in Oxnard, CA.

The earliest four-dimensional sculptures consisted of clusters of slender, hand-painted, vertical rods arithmetically spaced, and standing upright on a square or rectangular base. Later, he experimented with rods that were inclined at an angle, sometimes inter-locked and sometimes not. At other times inter-locked circular rings replaced the rods, and at yet other times there was a combination of rings and rods. At all times the objective was to, by way of a slow rotational motion of the sculpture, create a ghost-like apparition at its center that would not be visible with the absence of motion. “These shapes are created because the human eye joins all the points at which there is a color change and forms a curved surface. Each change in angle or view will transmogrify the image in an ever-changing amorphous manner”.

For Alexander, what seemed to matter was not the technical success of his four-dimensional sculptures, but rather the technical implications. His search for the fourth dimension was a search for something immaterial, an absence rather than a presence. His 4D sculptures were a break with the past…once again something conceptual, something experimental.

It was Alexander’s desire to photograph what appeared to him to be a “fourth dimensional image” within the sculptures along with his earlier three-dimensional paintings that were cause and inspiration for his entrance into the science of holography. Traditional single lens reflex photography was not capable of providing suitable images of his 4-Dimensional artworks for gallery consideration. Alexander felt holography, with its inherent movement parallax, might provide the solution. At the onset of his experimentation, he had not yet considered the potential for the “holographic art form”. That would come later.

The Science of Holography & Holographic Art

To create holograms Alexander first needed to study and thoroughly understand the science and complexities of holography. The concept for holography is credited to Dennis Gabor (1947), although it was not until after the invention of the laser in 1960 that the first true hologram was created. Sporadically, since that time numerous artists have attempted to use the medium of holography for artistic purpose and, for the most part, have failed in achieving that purpose.

In 1982 two of Alexander’s monumental works “Three White Towers” and “Palissandro'' were chosen for the sculpture exhibition of the Festival of Perth in Western Australia. “Palissandro” was later permanently installed at the Museum of the University of Western Australia. “Three Green Towers” and “Three White Towers” were subsequently exhibited along with forty-one of his smaller sculptures at Lister Gallery in Perth, NSW. Somewhat related to these events, Alexander won a competitive grant to study holography under Dr. Hariharan at the C.S.I.R.O. (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization) National Measurement Laboratories located just outside Sydney, Australia.

Soon after starting with Dr. Hariharan, Alexander realized that holography was not a solution for photographing his 4-D sculptures, but rather a potential resource for the creation of a unique form of artwork. He started first with abstract holograms. His immediate challenge was to bring them out from the field of scientific study and into the world of fine art. Various paintings he had produced in 1983 then led to the design and production of a seminal series of figurative holograms. Amongst numerous issues he would encounter, the continuous wave laser at C.S.I.R.O. was limited to highly stable objects of a small size (less than one meter square). With experiment he was soon able to breach the size limitations and constructively modify the manner of producing holographic imagery. His first two large format, 3’ x 6’ holograms were subsequently created; “There’s Been A Great Deal Of Talk About Her” and “Danielle’s Dream” were commissioned by British fashion industry designer Adel Rootstein for the opening of her new building in New York City.

Alexander’s “Horrors of War” hologram projected outward from the holographic plane a prior unheard of 14 feet. Later came “The Moment After Impact” and “Epicentre” holograms which projected 20 feet outward toward the observer, and then “Steel Wall” which projected 28 feet out from its holographic plane.

In 1985 Alexander’s holograms were chosen for the Australian Pavilion at Expo Japan. Throughout 1985/87 his holographic images were shown in art museums around Australia. In 1987 the PowerHouse Museum (Australia) commissioned him to create seven large format holograms on the senses for its permanent collection and exhibition. It was during this period that the Australian government commissioned one large format hologram for “Expo 88” in Brisbane.

It soon became obvious to Alexander that the holographic process might have (significant) impact as an art medium if it could be brought out from behind the side-show status it had occupied up until that time. “I was always interested in science just as I was in art, thus I was able to visualize the development of the process technically working alongside with people actively and professionally involved in the science of holography…In the beginning my first objective was to try to free the process from the constraints of little frames and give it the potential for being an artwork.“

The Holographic Movies, “Masks” “The Dream” & Progetto Leonardo

In 1986, at the laboratory of Professor Paul Smigielsky at the Franco-German Defense Research Establishment Laboratory in St. Louis, France, Alexander constructed, produced, and directed the world’s first pulse holographic motion picture entitled, “La Belle et Environment la Bête”,   which exhibited at the Musee de l’Holographie in Paris and later as a component of “Visages de Images Holographiques” at Mois de la Photo also in Paris.

In 1987, Alexander completed production of two landmark holographic movies, one entitled, “Masks” and the other, “The Dream”. In that same year, “Masks” was shown for the first time at Stella Polaris Gallery in Beverly Hills.

Also, in 1987 Alexander was selected to be the sole artist representing Australia at the Bienal Internacional de São Paulo in Brazil. Once again, he and his holograms were placed center stage. The installations filled two large rooms. The first room consisted of three holo-sculptures, “War into Peace 2”, “Freedom”, and “Final Gesture-Homage to Durer with Fringes”; the second room was dedicated to the unveiling premier of his seminal holographic movie entitled “The Dream”. It was the first time a holographic (or 3-D) movie could be viewed without the use of specially designed glasses. His movie “Masks” was also shown. The installation was of considerable and significant enough interest to garner Alexander formal invitations to stage retrospective exhibitions at the São Paulo Museu de Modern Arte and the Museo Nacional de Belles Artes in Santiago, Chile. Shortly thereafter numerous of his more traditional artworks were included in the Modern Museum of Art touring exhibition “Images in Space and Time'' in Canada.

In January of 1988, Art EXPO LA invited Alexander to exhibit one of his recently created holograms at its annual Art Fair in Los Angeles. He chose “The Horrors Of War”.

In 1989 Alexander was an invited artist/nominee at Progetto Leonardo in Milan, Italy. He was awarded “First Special Prize for Scientific Advancement in Film” for his short-form holographic movie, “The Dream”. It was at about this time that Alexander received a commission for a series of large format holograms to be produced for a United Nations traveling exhibition entitled “Toward A Better Environment”. The series was comprised of six large holographic artworks and several of his paintings. “The Horrors of War” was included as one of the six holograms.

In 1991 and again in 1993 Alexander was invited to have a solo exhibition of his holographic artworks and his paintings at the National Seoul Art Center Museum of Korea. He was commissioned by a Korean businessman and patron of the arts to produce six 1-meter square holograms entitled, “The Environment from the Beginning of Time to the Future”, and to create a 6 ‘ tall x 3’ wide hologram entitled “Christ Leaving The Cross” to be suspended upon completion above the altar of a Catholic Church in Taegu, Korea. He was also commissioned by Korean Broadcasting (KBS) to produce a promotional large format hologram of “Kumdori” the mascot for the 1991 World’s Fair in Taejon, Korea. Alexander now believed that he had measurably advanced the science of holography and with a newly defined artistic purpose. He was eager to begin something new.

The Art & The Influence of Holography - Holo-Paintings

After a long period of making holographic works, and then with the critical and artistic success achieved with his holographic works/movies, Alexander determined to evolve what for him would be a new manner for creating art. After returning to Los Angeles from his retrospective exhibition in Sao Paulo, Brazil in 1989, Alexander decided to once again paint, something he had not done since the late 1970s’. At the time, he determined that holograms, on the scale he was now able to produce them, due there unique lighting requirements, were essentially public artworks best viewed in a museum setting. Somewhat because of this and somewhat because of his natural tendency to move on, his subsequent paintings differed from his old ones in that they, at times, included the use of an integrated hologram.

In his first series of paintings following his holographic period there was a strong emphasis on three dimensionality and the use of different and varied materials. The works were entirely abstract, and in a way sculptural, due a strategic mix of three dimensional symbolic forms. He began expanding upon the conventional definition of a painting and he did so by way of painting in acrylic on canvas or board, and then mounting a laminated hologram atop the surface of the artwork to provide a painted and integrated medium for the projection of multi-colored holographic imagery that would project 6 – 10 feet out from the surface of the painting. The first series of such works was entitled “Dance of Souls”. Each individual work was identified numerically and exhibited first, in 1994 at “Art Futura” in Madrid, Spain and then later that year at “images du Futur” in Montreal,” Canada.

Computer Assisted Art

In 1994 Art writer and critic, Edward Lucie-Smith suggested to Alexander that he consider producing computer-generated art. Initially he was set-off by the idea. For him it was non-art. After further consideration he began to experiment. His first computer assisted artworks would be produced by scanning and manipulating numerous of his original paintings and calligraphy through the computer. Each work was morphed by way of a specific software program. The artworks were then transferred onto archival paper or canvas by way of the use of a 14 head, high resolution, laser inkjet printer and archival inks.

There were too many of these computer-assisted images to convert them into single or multiple editions. Rather, he would convert them into a short series of documentary films with the artworks being the cast of characters. He composed and produced the soundtrack for his first film, “Dance of the Souls”, and then for every film thereafter. “Dance of the Souls” and “Anima” were shot in a vertical format; whereas, the films that followed, (i.e., “Tribal Magic”, “In Search of the Miraculous”, “Spiritual Realm”, and ” Edge of Consciousness”) were all shot in the standard television aspect ratio of 16:9.

“These are artworks and not movies in the strict sense of the word(s); thus, they are closer to a meditative state of mind rather than their being an active form of audio-visual entertainment with a beginning, middle, and end”.

The Quaisi and The Block Buster or 3D paintings

In 2008, Alexander produced a series of artworks on canvas that were intended, by design and theory, to generate a cerebral response within the mind of the viewer in somewhat the same manner as a classical music generates  a cerebral response within the mind of the listener. To begin with he made use of something he called a “Quasi”. A Quasi is the middle of a morph between a question mark and an exclamation point.

This series of response experiments continued throughout the entire of roughly 14 artworks, some of which included a painted QUAISI. Some featured other applications such as small sculptures in bronze, aluminum, or plaster being attached to the painted surface of the canvas. He wanted to exploit both ambiguity and incongruity. He later integrated computer assisted images, which would soon lead him to the development of his own form of computer manipulated art starting in 2009.

The influence of Alexander’s holographic experiments upon his later artwork cannot be overstated. Even with his “Blockbuster” series this is true, although not so obvious as it is with holo-paintings or his Post-Contemporary artworks.

Blockbusters are paintings that manifest either painted canvasses emerging at right angles to a painted base canvass, painted canvasses that are at parallel levels beneath or above the painted base canvas, or a combination thereof. Block Busters or 3D paintings are, in essence, sculptural paintings or a morph between a sculpture and painting. Roughly a dozen of these works were produced by Alexander. The Blockbusters, and what came before, provided the inspiration for what occupied his creative output from 2015 to 2020. At the time he was concerned about there being too much redundancy in art and far too little creativity.

Post Contemporary Art

“The driving purpose for all this is to encourage young artists leaving art school with the idea that there are indeed masses of concepts and styles waiting to be explored and even exploited, contrary to a prevailing view that art is exclusively derivative and there is nothing that has not already been done”.

In 2015 Alexander attended a contemporary art exhibition in Santa Monica, CA. He was disillusioned by what he saw at the show, or more so, by what he did not see. For him there was far more redundancy than creativity. This provided him with immediate inspiration. He was then 88 years of age. He felt the need to create something new and to do it without delay. He began work on what would become over 100 original works on canvas that he named, Post Contemporary Artworks.

The “Block Busters” were the first of Alexander’s “Post Contemporary” artworks. He was committed to producing something that was non-derivative. All these works are abstract and integrate either two or more congruous or incongruous elements. Alexander was back to consideration of space. He was fascinated by the behavior of two forms of space that had different characteristics (i.e., normal 3-dimensional space and holographic space, and the interference of holographic space with three-dimensional space). As with a classical symphony, his intent was to have each artwork reach deep into the human psyche. He wanted for each of the artworks to evoke a distinctive inner sense of meaning whether by way of question or newfound understanding. He wanted to provide other artists with a unique and novel platform from which they could be influenced and inspired to produce entirely new works of their own.

General Sources

•	Division of Applied Physics Biennial Report 1983-85 p.2

•	"Arts Review" Sep 1985 "Alexander The Great" by Graham Huges pp 448-449

•	'Arts Review" Cristmass Issue Dec.1986 pp.658-659 Graham Huges "Working on the edge of the Impossible"

•	Magazine "Cinema papers" May 1987 Issue 63 p 1 and Trapping The Light Fantastic" by Fred Harden pp70-73

•	High Performance Magazine Vol10 #1 1987 Alexander Masks by Steven Durland p101

•	International Exhibition World of Holography". Japan pp24-25

•	"Arts Gallery International" The Contemporary Collectors Magazine Dec 1989 Immaterial Presences. The Holography of Alexander" pp.26-30 by Ray Zone

•	Progetto Leonardo book Milan,May 21-29 1989, "Alexander" First prize p12

•	"Alexander. A Retrospective Exhibition Works of the 1980s" by Edward Lucie-Smith pp 1-65 1990

•	"Art Gallery International" magazine -Alexander. Recent work p1

•	"Alexander.The Fantasy of Light and FourDimention Holographic Sculpture" by Kim,Yeong-Jae 1991

•	"Alexander.Holographic Sculpture" by Kim, Hong-Nyun 1991

•	"Images Du Futur" Magazine Canada. Alexander.Recent Works by Mousse p13 1992

•	"Leonardo" Vol26 Number 4 1993 Graham Saxby book review "Alexander" by Edward Lucie-Smith •	Seoul Art Center "A Dance of The Souls" A complete retrospective. TC White,1994

•	Appartion. Holographic Art in Australia by Rebecca Coyle and Philip Hayward "Alexander: The Artist As Holographer"pp38-60 1995

•	International Catalogue For Holography by Andrew Pepper"The Creative Holography Index" pp1-3 1995