The work's first image, which consists of little solidly black squares, depicts two people facing each other. They are connected ear-to-voice by something floral which they seem in the process of communicating to each other. The title of the frame (not given in black strokes, white spaces, incidentally, but elsewhere, as are all the titles for individual frames mentioned in this section), "mandala dialog," would seem to confirm this reading.

That those boxes have brief trails of black squares coming from their lower corners flickers the two figures in the picture ever so slightly between flat and slant. As a result they seem, in their flat phase, to be gradually separating from each other--to make room for the jeweling development of their pooled dialogue. In their slant phase. they seem to be speaking less to each other than into their dialogue, which exists more as a sort of art object than as an exchange of words. In either case, they seem to be creating something of importance beyond themselves.

Darkness, or the night, is a large part of the next frame, "pregnant jason." All kinds of connotations are aroused by the title, most pertinently (considering the title of the series as a whole) that of adventure ending in tragedy. Jason, of course, was the Greek hero who took the Argonaut manywhere in search of the golden fleece, which he succeeded in gaining; but Medea's killing of their children eventually followed. So he was pregnant in many senses-literally with his and Medea's progeny but more importantly with History, his own, his nation's, and his species', all of them dynamically beginning and (in this apocalyptic reading, at any rate) deplorably ending.

Two other details to note: each of tbe figures is tangled into himself or herself but, although also touching the other, is not tangled into that other. But tbe other detail worthy of note softens this somewhat anti-intimate quality: it is that o's are the picture's dots: hence, the dark areas have a fair amount of white, and are more lubricating than the squares of the previous panel. The o's also imply openness, femininity, egg-ness or maternity, and, auditorily, tbe sound of (perhaps wonder-filled) "oh's." All this makes the relationship depicted more tender than doomed-feeling.

The next image in the sequence, "lunar observor," is similarly simple-seeming. Someone large-headedly analytical-looking is gazing coolly at a dark rectangle. There are three moons jutting out of the rectangle. each in a different phase. Clearly, the rectangle is night, Within it is a pale, delicate figure I take to be a woman, She is facing the observor-- whom I take to be a man. So, a man is surveying the moon--all of it, not only as an astronomical object varying from day to day, but as an entity mythically feminine worlds beyond mere science.

The dots this time, incidentally, are asterisks. This makes tbe image a little denser- seeming than it was in the second frame but not so much as in the first. A slight prlckliness is injected, too, though of starlight as much as of burrs. They typify the ambiguities with which the image resonates.

The next frame seems also somewhat ambiguous. Its title is "dawn twins," The dawning sun is shown at the top of the page, radiant but also zigzagged with agitation. comprised as it is of v's on their sides. The rest of the page's image Is also composed of v's, but these are right-side up and. for me, snarl teeth Into what would otherwise be a happy representation of two beings facing each other, jumping Into the air, arms outstretched In joy for the return of the sun. A right-to-left symmetry holds sway except at the bottom where an edge is stepped, ranks of its v's turning perhaps to daylight from right to left.

The name of the next image is "showing off bicep strength." Again two figures are depicted and although they seem similar, they are not mirror images of each other. One is watching the other form a bicep. The little scene seems to be taking place inside some kind of factory which in gross appearance is symmetrical from right to left but unsymmetrical when viewed more closely. That it is constructed of x's hints of barbed- wire imprisonment. That the show-off is shown below a closed box and pipes which seem to open downward while the other figure appears below an open box and pipes for some reason opening upward makes the second figure seem to me outgoing, open, free in comparison to the other. And female to the other's maleness.

As I can't say too much, it is the capacity of a work of art reasonably to invite such interpretations that indicates its excellance. (By reasonably I mean by presenting concrete elements capable of backing a given interpretation when pointed out--as, for instance, two things sticking up like smokestacks in the picture under discussion back my contention that a factory is meant, or could be meant. Moreover, there are people in it, and the structure depicted is approximately the same shape as a factory building. If I wanted to term the thing an ocean liner, the smoke stacks would still work, but the structure's overall shape wouldn't. If I wanted to call it a petunia, that might work, too. but I myself can find no elements that would fit the interpretation. But enough of this self- Justification. On to the next frame, which is titled "totem."

"attempted disintegration of the feminine" is the most subtle and delicate frame in the sequence. It is comprised of the smallest typographical element there is, the period, and after the preceding heavy dark utterances seems vague and ethereal. And both feminine and disintegrated or nearly so, I should add.

On closer examination one sees that the block consists of 12 rows of 4 squares, each of them consisting of 41 periods and that the seemingly haphazardly thrown-in extra white lines in actuality comprise a mirror image of the shape outside the block. That I now take to be "the feminine." It would now seem that the lines dividing the block into small squares are evidence of the attempt to disintegrate the feminine. But it didn't work--the feminine slithered free, still in one piece. and now twirls unconcernedly to the left of where it was. Gracefully flowerlike, I might add. Nevertheless. the idea of someone wanting to disintegrate the feminine. particularly coming right after the glare of a warlike totem, seems to build one closer to the terror of the apocalypse.

The next frame has a simple title, "lost." Its complete lack of symmetry after so much prior symmetry gives the image a strong feel of lostness. That the picture is divided into two banded halves whose bands fail to line up disorients the figure too, putting him in a habitat which is out of sgnch--or senseless. wrong, alien; indeed, the figure is going exactly wrong, going on the left in a direction exactly opposite to the flow of the environment on the right.

He is severally-tangled throughout. More interesting, he is hanging together in a kind of state of suspense appropriate for one who has lost his bearings. Kempton deftly indicates this state by not building his man of a single line which weaves over and under parts of itself as it turns through its growth as in all the other "woven" figures in the sequence to this point; instead he puts the man together with five discrete pieces of lines, each of those pieces sliding into at least one other piece but not looking as though capable of holding anywhere; rather, they float in place, on the verge of falling into a heap.

An even more beautifully subtle deftness of kempton's here (not too easy to find in the poor reproduction above) is the idea of building his man all the more alienated from his environment by choosing n's to dot him with-that is, with the opposite letter of the u's which comprise the picture's background! (I only noticed this when writing out this analysis some seven or eight reads of the piece after my first,) That this use of two typographical characters to draw a picture happens only this one time in kempton's apocalypse especially accentuates the man's "wrongness"--or his environment's.

It also gives an extra verbal dimension to the picture, spelling "un," a word for a kind of disintegration, a coming apart. At the same time it spells "nu," or "new," another word Un Its ultimate use as a description of the never-experienced-before) for "that which is fearfully disorienting." All this, by the way, makes this frame of kempton's sequence its first instance of genuine litagraphy, for its typography clearly adds semantic significance to it. At the same time the grunted "nnnn" of the figure against the backdrop of the similarly elemental "uuuu" grunt of the environment paints other appropriate effects into the scene, these ones auditory.

"lost," incidentally, shows again how the use of familiar typographical characters to dot out pictures can help a reader: it this case, it helps him pick up the change of the u's to n's more readily than he would have if the image had consisted of, say, squiggles rather than letters.

Beyond Its intrinsic appeal, and its strength in carrying on the narrative of kempton's sequence, the story now entering disintegrations and lostnesses, "lost" has a further virtue for me: it strongly 'alludes to one of my favoritest painters, Paul Klee. One concrete albeit minor advantage of this is that it brings Naziism and the Second World War into the apocalyptic tone of the kempton's sequence, for Klee was part German (but antiNazi) and died in 1942 with the war at its height, both in the world and in the larger place that his last pictures were.

More important, the allusion allows "lost" to include a great artist in its connotations, and through him all of art history. It also allows the works of Klee to include "lost" and the rest of kempton's ouevre, and through him, oncoming art history. Both artists grow from the allusion.

That allusion, I might add, is strictly an allusion, not cheap evidence of derivativeness; kempton's style is too large and unique to be considered a repetition of anyone else's style rather than the step from several others' styles that all major artists' styles are.

While on the subject of influences, I should point out that among the artists I feel have influenced kempton in this sequence of his are the many Amerindian totem-carvers who have done such brilliant work, the Egyptian-and Aztec and related Amerindian--scribes who wrought the first picturing words, and Kandinsky. Elsewhere he has been significantly influenced by Escher, as he himself acknowledges. But enough of this digression--on to further analyses!

A larger imprisonment is the subject of the tenth segment of the sequence, "offering." Part of the totem is back. Constructed of z's, he is a blocky hard god with an angry mouth in a devourer's jaw and an all-glare unpitying eye. But he also sports a rather comical Mickey Mouse ear. Somehow that makes him seem all the more ferocious.

Another figure faces the god. Probably he also is a worshipper because he. like the kneeling or genuflecting figure, has been whitened out of a block of z's. This figure looks much like one of the prison guards in the preceding panel; he thus suggests to me a henchman of the god whose rites we are observing.

Isolated from the others because not a mere inscription on a block of the material that the god is made of, is the fifth figure in the scene. He/she seems full of despair, arms outstretched toward the contemptuous god, and the indifferent worshipper within the god. A parent of the sacrificial victim? A parent, spouse or friend of one who has been lost to barbaric and moronic superstition? Or perhaps a fellow-worshipper, advancing to embrace the god. Or even a priest, the one who has just handed over the victim. All these interpretations. and no doubt others as good, are possible. I favor the reading which 'Supposes this final figure to be opposed to the god, though, since he or she Is least surrounded by the buzz-saw/sleep that the z's comprising the god hint of. Whatever reading one prefers, though, "offering" clearly depicts another step toward apocalypse.

The 11th picture in the series, "apathy backing oppression," continues the theme. One rejecting figure turns his back on, while a second already has his back on, and his arms folded against, a melancholy twisted limp figure in a rectangular hiss of s's on which an overbearing giant stands.

It is worth noting. too, that the giant's feet are stuck in the block containing his victim; ergo, he is imprisoned in his act of imprisoning--and perhaps needing that act to hold him up.

I think I can do better with the next picture. though. It is called "arm dancers," The thing I notice first about it is the density of the dark areas' packing--the @'s completely, and rather suffocatingly, fill the areas they cover; moreover, their full curvature gives a waviness to the figures they bound; this, in turn. imparts a lively wiggle to the dance of the figure to the upper left, The figure on his left doesn't seem to be dancing, though, although he perhaps has just turned his partner loose for a spin, (Kempton's figures, by the way, all strike me as male except where the context or title indicates otherwise because they lack curves,)

I don't know the title of the frame after "arm dancers" but I think I can find a reasonable interpretation of it. Like "arm dancers" it is densely packed up with circled characters, in this instance copyright symbols--which look bottle-cap-metallic. In gross outline the image is symmetrical, but the flanking rectangles are differently inscribed, and a more evident detail on the left spoils the symmetry. By spoiling it, incidentally, it demonstrates. again, the expressive strength of symmetry-establish it and the smallest deviation from it takes on greatly increased interest.

A fiercely shining noonday sun which resembles some kind of industrial dynamo rules the space above the boat. The scene as a whole seems to depict business as usual. despite the nearness of the final "precinct" of this "5th" apocalypse in existence's unending cycle of life/death, creation/destruction.

The second-to-the-last image in the series is alled "power room," so It has a thematic connection with my interpretation of the one before it. Very complex and unsymmetrical, it reminds me of "offering," for in both frames at least one figure is facing a god-figure. In "power room" the person facing the god-figure, who could also be a king is bearing a small offering--which the god-king regards expressionlessly.

Fire, or at least light. is the subject of the sequence's final panel, whose title is "lite storm." Two figures appear to be walking away while arrows or rays of light dart toward them--or toward or from the two parallelograms in the picture. The two figures are identical rather than symmetrical, which is something new in the sequence. I can't say what that means, though, nor can I figure out why one of the parallelograms passes between the two figures while the other passes behind them both. The parallelograms suggest a chest of light being opened, I might add--purification starting? That the frame is dotted together with a's ends the work in beginnings, which seems appropriate. That the light-rays turn dark against the parallelograms seems significant to me, but I can't say why.