David Reed and John Yau, Special Lecture 1988

David Reed and John Yau give a collaborative lecture on the work of Forest Bess. They detail his life growing up in Texas, and his many conceptual interests in philosophy, psychology, and alchemy. They also go in depth about the way he engaged with paint as a medium: his brush-strokes, textural mark making, and the way he engaged with the scale of his work. They note that Bess wanted his vertical paintings to always be more important than his horizontal, which has to do with his visions. His visions come from being an outsider and how that made him an artist, which was both good and bad. He had visions of these genetic mutation creations which led to the paintings he created. Reed and Yau also tell the participants how Bess hoped to create films and have a writing project as well. They end their collaborative lecture by telling the participants how Bess had a desire to become a hermaphrodite in order to end all violence in the world and the lack of humour or irony in his work. This was due to Bess always approaching all of his issues with a serious lens.