Artist Secret Society

The Artists Secret Society was first founded in 1415 in a bar in Florence, Italy by the architect Filippo Brunelleschi and the painter and sculptor Donattello after discovering they had both been shorted on commissioned work by Cosimo the Elder, founder of the Medici dynasty and a well-known skinflint.

Languishing for many years due to the active opposition of the Medici's, the organization reached its nadir in 1497 when it was hoodwinked by Girolamo Savonarola, the Dominican priest and leader of Florence, into sponsoring a weenie roast that turned into the Bonfire of the Vanities where many of their paintings were burned.

Remaining dormant and serving as little more than an excuse for artists to get out of the house every once in a while, the organization was reconstituted by the Dutch painter Rembrandt in 1632 after he was asked by a client to repaint a portion of the great masterpiece The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp to "match the couch".

Along with Johannes Vermeer, with whom Rembrandt shared a fondness for chocolate bunnies, bowling, and conspiracy theories, a doctrine was established that sought to define a new paradigm for secret societies. Bannished was the concept of using mere symbols and rituals to control and dominate others through claims of exclusive knowledge as has been seen in organizations as disparate as the Freemasons, the Rosicrucian Order, Skull and Bones, or the Brotherhood of Death.

Instead, artists would band together as "worshippers of the imagination" whose immense creative power to achieve fascinating artistic visions would change the way humanity viewed its own existential realities (whether they liked it or not).

Today as a result of the natural evolution of this philosophical doctrine, under the leadership of the Artists Secret Society now headquartered on the East End of Long Island, the creative community is as influential as at any time in recorded history. Under the direction of David Gamble and Eric Ernst, the organization's various covert and mysterial programs continue to enhance the status of artists in all mediums, furthering the growth of new global cultures as the next generation continues to be subtly encoded with the esoteric rituals and humanistic priorities of the A.S.S.

David Gamble

Born in London England in 1953, David Gamble is a photographer and painter of international acclaim and the winner of a number of prestigious awards including the Grand Prix European Award in Arles in 1987 for Best Photographer in Europe as well as the World Press Award, Holland and American Photography Award in 1989.

A graduate of the Ealing Art School in London, he has also made two documentary films in 1989 and 1992 and his photos have been collected by a number of major institutions including the National Portrait Gallery and National Photography Museum in Bradford.

Currently working in large-scale nude photographs over which he often superimposes painterly effects, the end result is an atmosphere that is gently surreal and dreamlike. Conjuring a cinematic sensibility in his compositional framing and subtle balance of light and dark, the images that result are simultaneously quietly evocative and jarringly provocative, comfortably familiar yet also eerily exotic.

Eric Ernst

Eric Ernst was born in Norwalk, Connecticut in 1956 into a family of some notoriety in the art world. Originally intent on avoiding any direct involvement in the arts himself, he graduated from George Washington University with a B.A. in Japanese Studies followed by an all-but-completed M.A. in the same subject from the University of Michigan (to this day he insists the actual writing of the master's thesis should just be considered a minor formality).

In between these academic respites, he lived in Japan working as an apprentice to a Japanese woodblock artist, studied Zen meditation, and was employed as a disc jockey at a Tokyo radio station under the pseudonym of "Reckless Eric, The Mad Artist of the Airwaves". More importantly, his studies there were to later imbue his work with varied elements of Japanese and Oriental aesthetics in terms of coloration and concepts of rhythm and asymmetry in design.

Further incorporating aspects highlighting the geometric purity of the Russian avant-garde and the later Bauhaus artists, Ernst recently has begun incorporating elements of representational imagery into his constructions. These serve to create an interaction of forms, shapes, and colors that, mixed with musical and harmonic elements, conjure a more immediate narrative and strive to transcend the limits of pure geometric abstraction.

Damien Hirst, Stephen Hawking

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