Artist’s Statement
Ben’s own account of his artistic creed: the calligraphic line as the building block of painting, the supreme mathematical relationship as the source of beauty, and the painter’s debt to Titian, Cézanne, and Knox Martin.
Writing
Essays, academic papers, and letters — Ben’s written argument that beauty has a structure, and that structure can be learned.
On Beauty
A close reading of My Nefertiti through three stages of its making — tracing the supreme spatial relationships that give rise to visual pleasure, and what it means to look at art “until it speaks to us in our native tongues.”
Does Fetish Point to the Aesthetic of the Ugly?
A painter’s reply to Kant, Freud, Lacan, and the modernist critics. Arguing through Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, a Zaire wood carving, and Knox Martin’s nudes that beauty is border-blind — and that the supreme mathematical relationship knows neither geography nor culture.
The Inner Issues of Painting vs the Outer, Circumstantial Issues
On the difference between what a painting is about and what it does — the inner structural life of a composition against the outer apparatus of interpretation, fetishism, and gender theory, examined through the work of Knox Martin.
Recommendations by Knox Martin
Three letters spanning twenty-six years from the New York master Knox Martin — Ben’s teacher, friend, and lifelong champion. Culminating in the 1988 declaration: “Mr. Lau, in my considered opinion, is truly one of the greatest artists of our time, unknown, unsung.”