About the Author

Kurt von Meier was born in San Francisco in 1934, and has lived in California from the Bay Area and the Carmel-Big Sur coast to the Napa wine country and the Sacramento Valley. Like Marcel Duchamp, he was able to satisfy military obligations by serving as a printer and lithographer (in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War) returning under the GI Bill to earn a BA from UC Berkeley. After graduate work in Madrid and at Stanford, he received both MFA and PhD degrees from Princeton University.

Dr. von Meier has lectured extensively in New Zealand and Australia, and at many major American institutions, on art and mythology, art history, and aesthetics. He has given workshops at Esalen, written for Artforum, Art International and Vogue magazines, and curated exhibitions ranging from the art of the Huichols and Ikat weaving from Indonesia, to shows featuring radical contemporary work. He has traveled widely and has studied with T'ai Chi masters, traditional Hopis, Tibetan lamas, and with various Sufi schools. Many artists, writers and performers -- such as John Lilly, Joseph Campbell, Andy Warhol, Lew Reed, and Frank Zappa -- have appeared as guests in his art history classes. He has taught at Princeton and UCLA, and is currently Professor of Art at California State University, Sacramento.

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