Paul Laffoley (August 14, 1935 – November 16, 2015) was an American visionary artist and

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs, and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

based in

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

Early Life

Paul Laffoley was born in

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is a suburb in the Greater Boston metropolitan area, located directly across the Charles River from Boston. The city's population as of the 2020 United States census, ...

, to an

Irish Catholic Irish Catholics () are an ethnoreligious group native to Ireland, defined by their adherence to Catholic Christianity and their shared Irish ethnic, linguistic, and cultural heritage.The term distinguishes Catholics of Irish descent, particul ...

family on August 14, 1935. His father, Paul Laffoley Sr., was a

lawyer A lawyer is a person who is qualified to offer advice about the law, draft legal documents, or represent individuals in legal matters. The exact nature of a lawyer's work varies depending on the legal jurisdiction and the legal system, as w ...

and president of the Cambridge Trust Company. Laffoley Sr. introduced his son to religious and philosophical beliefs, including aspects of

Buddhism Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...

and

Hinduism Hinduism () is an Hypernymy and hyponymy, umbrella term for a range of Indian religions, Indian List of religions and spiritual traditions#Indian religions, religious and spiritual traditions (Sampradaya, ''sampradaya''s) that are unified ...

as well as what he called "mind-physics," but opposed his son's pursuit of painting as a career. Paul Laffoley Jr. wrote that his first spoken word was "Constantinople" at the age of six months, and that he did not speak again until he was four years old. As a child, he was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. According to Laffoley, he attended the progressive Mary Lee Burbank School in Belmont, where his talent as a draftsman was ridiculed by his

abstract expressionist Abstract expressionism in the United States emerged as a distinct art movement in the aftermath of World War II and gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s, a shift from the American social realism of the 1930s influenced by the Great Depressi ...

teachers. After studies at the Waldorf School, Laffoley completed undergraduate studies at

Brown University Brown University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is the List of colonial colleges, seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US, founded in 1764 as the ' ...

, graduating in 1961 with honors in

classics Classics, also classical studies or Ancient Greek and Roman studies, is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, ''classics'' traditionally refers to the study of Ancient Greek literature, Ancient Greek and Roman literature and ...

philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

, and

art history Art history is the study of Work of art, artistic works made throughout human history. Among other topics, it studies art’s formal qualities, its impact on societies and cultures, and how artistic styles have changed throughout history. Tradit ...

. While at Brown in 1961, according to his "Phenomenology of Revelation", Laffoley was given eight electroshock treatments after the termination of "about a year of weekly sessions with a psychiatrist, who had treated imfor a mild state of

catatonia Catatonia is a complex syndrome most commonly seen in people with underlying mood disorders, such as major depressive disorder, or psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia. People with catatonia exhibit abnormal movement and behaviors, wh ...

." From an early age, Laffoley demonstrated an interest in

UFO An unidentified flying object (UFO) is an object or phenomenon seen in the sky but not yet identified or explained. The term was coined when United States Air Force (USAF) investigations into flying saucers found too broad a range of shapes ...

s, having seen the movie ''

The Day the Earth Stood Still ''The Day the Earth Stood Still'' is a 1951 American science fiction film from 20th Century Fox, produced by Julian Blaustein and directed by Robert Wise. It stars Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Hugh Marlowe, Sam Jaffe, Billy Gray, F ...

'' 873 times. He explained that his interest in the film derived partly from a fascination with the architecture of the spaceship, which, early on in his life, was subconscious. As a child he vowed to become an architect so that he could design flying saucers, although he did not become a registered architect until he was 50 years of age.

Career

Following his formal education in architecture at

and

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...

, Laffoley began to assimilate and systematically synthesise his related interests. Looking for jobs, he went to

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

in 1963 to work with the artist and architect Frederick Kiesler, and was also recruited to watch late-night TV for

Andy Warhol Andy Warhol (;''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''"Warhol" born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director and producer. A leading figure in the pop art movement, Warhol ...

in exchange for housing. Laffoley had been painting in the basement of his family home in Belmont on the weekends, where he completed his first fully mature vision: The Kali-Yuga: The End of the Universe at 424826 A.D. From this point forward, Laffoley began to formulate his trans-disciplinary approach to a new discipline, combining

science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and construction, constructi ...

and

spirituality The meaning of ''spirituality'' has developed and expanded over time, and various meanings can be found alongside each other. Traditionally, spirituality referred to a religious process of re-formation which "aims to recover the original shape o ...

into the practice of painting. Laffoley first began to organise his ideas in a format related to eastern

mandalas A mandala (, ) is a geometric configuration of symbols. In various spiritual traditions, mandalas may be employed for focusing attention of practitioners and adepts, as a spiritual guidance tool, for establishing a sacred space and as an aid ...

, partially inspired by the patterns he watched for Warhol on late-night television. This quickly developed into four general subcategories of paintings:

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s, psychotronic devices, meta-energy,

time travel Time travel is the hypothetical activity of traveling into the past or future. Time travel is a concept in philosophy and fiction, particularly science fiction. In fiction, time travel is typically achieved through the use of a device known a ...

, and

lucid dream In the psychology subfield of oneirology, a lucid dream is a type of dream wherein the dreamer realizes that they are dreaming during their dream. The capacity to have lucid dreams is a trainable cognitive skill. During a lucid dream, the dreamer ...

ing. Conceived of as "structured singularities", Laffoley did not work in series, approaching each project as a unique schematic. Living a solitary lifestyle, each 73 ½ x 73 ½ inch canvas would take up to three years to paint and code. By the late 1980s, Laffoley began to shift from the spiritual and the intellectual to viewing his work as an interactive, physically engaging psychotronic device. After the destruction of the World Trade Center towers in the

September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...

, Laffoley was among several architects who submitted designs in 2002 for the competition to plan the Freedom Tower. Laffoley's design was inspired by the work of Catalan architect

Antoni Gaudí Antoni Gaudí i Cornet ( , ; ; 25 June 1852 – 10 June 1926) was a Catalans, Catalan architect and designer from Spain, widely known as the greatest exponent of Catalan ''Modernisme''. Gaudí's works have a style, with most located in Barc ...

and was conceived as a hotel in the style of Gaudí's

Sagrada Família The Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família, otherwise known as Sagrada Família, is a church under construction in the Eixample district of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. It is the largest unfinished Catholic church in the world. Desi ...

church in

Barcelona Barcelona ( ; ; ) is a city on the northeastern coast of Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second-most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...

. After the Austin Museum of Art organized a traveling survey of his career in 1999, Laffoley gained a following among curators. The

Palais de Tokyo The Palais de Tokyo (''Tokyo Palace'') is a building dedicated to modern and contemporary art, located at 13 avenue du Président-Wilson, facing the Trocadéro, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. The eastern wing of the building belongs to ...

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

devoted an entire room to his work in its 2009 exhibition "Chasing Napoleon," and several of his works were included in "The Alternative Guide to the Universe" at the

Hayward Gallery The Hayward Gallery is an art gallery within the Southbank Centre in central London, England and part of an area of major arts venues on the South Bank of the River Thames. It is sited adjacent to the other Southbank Centre buildings (the Royal ...

in London in 2013. Other major shows include "Premonitions of the Bauharoque" at the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, "Secret Garden" at the

Hamburger Bahnhof Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart is the former Train station#Terminus, terminus of the Berlin–Hamburg Railway in Berlin, Germany, on Invalidenstrasse in the Moabit district opposite the Charité hospital. Today it serves as ...

, Berlin, and the monograph ''The Essential Paul Laffoley'' edited by Douglas Walla and published by the University of Chicago Press in Spring 2016. In 2001, Laffoley was badly injured in a fall.Paul Laffoley
by Rupert Howe, ''Wonderland Magazine''; published September 2009 Complications from

diabetes Diabetes mellitus, commonly known as diabetes, is a group of common endocrine diseases characterized by sustained high blood sugar levels. Diabetes is due to either the pancreas not producing enough of the hormone insulin, or the cells of th ...

led to the amputation of his right leg below the knee;Paul Laffoley
at the Wynn Newhouse Awards; retrieved June 24, 2019 at Laffoley's request,

Stan Winston Stanley Winston (April 7, 1946 – June 15, 2008) was an American television and film special make-up effects artist, best known for his work in the ''Terminator'' series, the first three '' Jurassic Park'' films, '' Aliens'', '' The Thing'', ...

made him a custom

prosthetic In medicine, a prosthesis (: prostheses; from ), or a prosthetic implant, is an artificial device that replaces a missing body part, which may be lost through physical trauma, disease, or a condition present at birth (Congenital, congenital disord ...

leg that resembled a lion's paw, symbolising Laffoley's astrological sign, Leo.A party for the thinking Angeleno
by Shana Ting Lipton, in the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...

''; published February 19, 2004; retrieved June 24, 2019

Works

Paul Laffoley's paintings combine words and imagery, typically on large canvases, to depict a spiritual architecture of explanation. They addressed concepts like dimensionality,

(through 'hacking' relativity), connections between conceptual threads shared by philosophers, and theories about the cosmic origins of mankind. Laffoley's writings and works of art were published in May 2016 by the

University of Chicago Press The University of Chicago Press is the university press of the University of Chicago, a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. It is the largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It pu ...

in a book entitled ''The Essential Paul Laffoley'' edited by Douglas Walla, with additional texts by Linda Dalywimple Henderson, Arielle Saiber and Steven Moskowitz. British writer Michael Bracewell, in his collection of essays entitled ''When Surface was Depth'' observed: "If Laffoley's work within the Boston Visionary Cell can be said to have one principal preoccupation - a common denominator of his eclectic scholarship and practice - then that preoccupation would be to understand the process by which one goes from becoming to being." Bracewell has also written that "The Boston Visionary Cell, as a concretized manifestation of its inhabitant's work and preoccupations, describes how a chaos of data - no less than a chaos of marble - can be sculpted by research to release the perfect forms within it." The Estate of Paul Laffoley is represented by Kent Fine Art in New York.

Death

Laffoley died on November 16, 2015, in

South Boston South Boston (colloquially known as Southie) is a densely populated neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, United States, located south and east of the Fort Point Channel and abutting Dorchester Bay (Boston Harbor), Dorchester Bay. It has under ...

, Massachusetts, of congestive heart failure.

Exhibitions

* The Force Structure of the Mystical Experience. New York: Kent Fine Art, 2015. * Chasing Napoleon. Paris:

, 2009. * Architectonic Thought-Forms: Gedankenexperiment in Zombie Aesthetics. A Survey of the Visionary Art of Paul Laffoley. Texas: Austin Museum of Art, 1999. * Paul Laffoley: Secret Universe. Berlin:

, 2012. * The Alternative Guide to the Universe. London:

, 2013. * Paul Laffoley
The Boston Visionary Cell
New York: Kent Fine Art, 2013. * Paul Laffoley: Premonitions of the Bauharoque. Seattle:

Henry Art Gallery The Henry Art Gallery ("The Henry") is a contemporary art museum located on the campus of the University of Washington, in Seattle, Washington, United States. Located on the west edge of the university's campus along 15th Avenue N.E. in the Un ...

, 2013.

Major works

* ''The Kali-Yuga: the End of the Universe at 424826 A.D.'' (1965) * ''The Cosmos Falls into the Chaos as Shakti Urborosi: The Elimination of Value Systems by Spectrum Analysis'' (1965) * ''The Ecstasy of Revulsion'' (1966) * ''The World Self'' (1967) * ''I, Robur, Master of the World'' (1968) * ''The Visionary Art Process'' (1969) * ''The Final Descent From Hyparxis'' (1970) * ''The Promethean Sinner'' (1970) * ''The Visionary Point'' (1970) * ''Utopia: Time Cast As A Voyage'' (1974) * ''Alchemy: The Telenomic Process of the Universe'' (1974) * ''Temporality: The Great Within of the Universe'' (1974) * ''The Visionary Artist’s Studio'' (1974) * ''Get Thee Behind Me, Satan'' (1974–1983) * ''The Third Living Creature'' (1975) * ''The Kyklos of Hermocrates'' (1975) * ''Black-White Hole: the Force of the History of the Universe to Produce Total Non-Existence'' (1976) * ''The Secret of Life Lies in Death'' (1976) * ''The Living Klein Bottle House of Time'' (1976) * ''The Comet Kohoutek'' (1976) * ''The Renovation Mundi'' (1977) * ''A Proposal For A Pinball Museum'' (1978) * ''Cosmolux'' (1981) * ''The Orgone Motor'' (1982) * ''Color Breathing'' (1983) * ''Thanaton III'' (1989) * ''Geochronmechane: The Time Machine from the Earth'' (1990) * ''It Came From Beneath Space: Lucid Dream Number 52'' (1991) * ''The Solitron'' (1997) * ''Dimensionality: The Manifestation of Fate'' (1999) * ''After Gaudi: A Grand Hotel for New York City'' (2002) * ''Pickman's Mephitic Models'' (2004) * ''The Myth of the Zeit-Geist'' (2013)

Books and monographs

* Laffoley, Paul, edited and texts by Douglas Walla, with essays by Linda Dalrymple Henderson, Arielle Saiber and Steve Moskowitz. "The Essential Paul Laffoley" Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 2016 * Laffoley, Paul, and Jeanne M. Wasilik. "The Phenomenology of Revelation". New York: Kent Fine Art, 1989. * Laffoley, P. (1999). Architectonic Thought Forms: a Survey of the Art of Paul Laffoley 1967–1999. Austin, TX: Austin Museum of Fine Art. * Paul Laffoley: Secret Universe. Walther König, Köln, 2012. (catalog) * Croquer, Luis. (2013) "Paul Laffoley: Premonitions of the Bauharoque". Seattle: Henry Art Gallery. * Laffoley, Paul. (2016) "The Essential Paul Laffoley: Works from the Boston Visionary Cell." Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Interviews

* The Viking Youth Power Hour interview Paul at the Esozone, August 11, 2007 * February 12, 2007. 3-hour interview on Mike Hagan's "RadiOrbit" show. Broad range of topics covered including Laffoley's early life, working on the World Trade Center in the 1970s, developing his time travel theories, the Raelians,

Buckminster Fuller Richard Buckminster Fuller (; July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983) was an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist. He styled his name as R. Buckminster Fuller in his writings, publishing more t ...

nanotechnology Nanotechnology is the manipulation of matter with at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometers (nm). At this scale, commonly known as the nanoscale, surface area and quantum mechanical effects become important in describing propertie ...

, living architecture and 2012. * 2001 Thanaton III produced for Channel 4. * 1999 Pseudo.com Online Network interview with Richard Metzger of The Disinformation Company * 1998 ''The Mystery of Genius'' (two part series) for the Arts & Entertainment Channel produced by Robert Fiveson. (broadcast in 1999). Interviewed by John Metherell. * 1997 Paul Laffoley on the Time Machine, ''Strange Universe'' (original broadcast September 10, 1997). Interviewed by Alisyn Camerota.

Notable public collections

Addison Gallery of American Art Addison may refer to: Places Canada * Addison, Ontario, a community United States * Addison, Alabama, a town * Addison, Illinois, a village * Addison, Kentucky, an unincorporated community * Addison, Maine, a town * Addison, Michigan, a vil ...

, Andover, MA *

Austin Museum of Art Austin refers to: Common meanings * Austin, Texas, United States, a city * Austin (given name), a list of people and fictional characters * Austin (surname), a list of people and fictional characters * Austin Motor Company, a British car manufactu ...

, Austin, TX * Brockton Museum of Art, Brockton, MA * Continental Can Corporation, NY *

First National Bank of Chicago First Chicago Bank was a Chicago, United States-based retail and commercial bank tracing its roots to 1863, when it received one of the first charters under the then new National Bank Act. Over the years, the bank operated under several names inc ...

, Chicago, IL *

Grand Rapids Art Museum The Grand Rapids Art Museum (GRAM) is an art museum located in Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States, with collections ranging from Renaissance to Modern Art and special collections on 19th and 20th-century European and American art. Its holdin ...

, Grand Rapids, MI *

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was designed ...

, Washington D.C. *

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the list of largest art museums, 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 painting ...

, MA * Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, Miami, FL *

Pérez Art Museum Miami Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM)—officially known as the Jorge M. Pérez Art Museum of Miami-Dade County—is a contemporary art museum that relocated in 2013 to the Maurice A. Ferré Park in Downtown Miami, Florida. Founded in 1984 as the Cent ...

, FL * Tufts New England Medical Center, Boston, MA *

American Visionary Art Museum The American Visionary Art Museum (AVAM) is an art museum located in Baltimore, Maryland's Federal Hill neighborhood at 800 Key Highway. The museum specializes in the preservation and display of outsider art (also known as "intuitive art," " ...

, Baltimore, MD * American Folk Art Museum, New York, NY *

DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum The deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum is a sculpture park and contemporary art museum on the southern shore of Flint's Pond in Lincoln, Massachusetts, 20 miles northwest of Boston. It was established in 1950, and is the largest park of its k ...

, Lincoln, MA *

, Seattle, WA

References

External links

*
Paul Laffoley
The Estate of Paul Laffoley and Kent Fine Art
Paul Laffoley: The Boston Visionary Cell 2013
squarespace.com
A Beautiful Mind: Paul Laffoley by Ken Johnson for the Boston Globe
squarespace.com Feb 11, 2007 * The Essential Paul Laffoley – The Essential Paul Laffoley by The University of Chicago Press, 2016
Paul Laffoley: The Force Structure of the Mystical Experience 2015
squarespace.com
Paul Laffoley Posters
{{DEFAULTSORT:Laffoley, Paul 1935 births 2015 deaths Brown University alumni Visionary artists American outsider artists American philosophers of art Architectural theoreticians 20th-century American architects American architecture writers American male non-fiction writers American diarists American non-fiction environmental writers American technology writers Harvard Graduate School of Design alumni American futurologists Modernist architects from the United States Solar building designers High-tech architecture Organic architecture American sustainability advocates American contemporary painters 20th-century American painters American male painters 21st-century American painters 20th-century American non-fiction writers American amputees 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American male artists