The Canadian-Mexican artist Alan Glass's early work Ouverture prochaine (1962; Fig. 1) is deceptively simple in its construction, comprising a black wooden box glazed and sealed with red wax. The glass pane has been painted white with clearly visible circular motions, creating the appearance of turbulent clouds, swirling winds, or an intricately adorned curtain about to part, as though confirming the titular promise that something is on the cusp of opening. This tantalizing promise of revelation aside, the box remains opaque, its suggested mysteries safeguarded for more than 60 years. Visually, Ouverture prochaine is an atypical work for Glass, yet, the box is telling for the sense of secrecy and mystery surrounding his vast oeuvre. Although none of his other boxed assemblages veil their contents in such a literal way, their intricate arrangements of found objects and quotes from or allusions to art, poetry, and a wide range of spiritual ideas appear to be cryptograms without anything like a preconceived solution or interpretation. Like so many of Glass's works, Ouverture prochaine suggests a search for gnosis in the sense of knowledge that cannot be discursively articulated but instead achieved through an experiential transgression of conventional reason.

In the following pages, I provide an overview of Glass's early artistic production and then suggest that his works is characterized by gnosopoetics, or a search for suprarational knowledge through the making of surrealist art. I then focus on discussing Glass's treatment of death in his mid-1960s production and his late work. His many depictions of death extend his gnosopoetics to the realm of thanatognosis, as his artworks attempt to exalt death, decipher its mysteries, and probe it for secrets of transformation.

加拿大裔墨西哥艺术家艾伦·格拉斯 (Alan Glass) 的早期作品《序曲 prochaine》（1962 年；图 1）的结构看似简单，由一个黑色木盒组成，上釉并用红蜡密封。玻璃板被漆成白色，带有清晰可见的圆周运动，营造出汹涌的云朵、旋转的风或即将分开的装饰复杂的窗帘的外观，仿佛证实了名义上的承诺，即某物即将打开。撇开这个诱人的揭秘承诺不谈，这个盒子仍然是不透明的，它所暗示的谜团被保守了 60 多年。从视觉上看，《序曲》是格拉斯的一部非典型作品，然而，这个盒子却讲述了他庞大的作品周围的秘密和神秘感。尽管他的其他盒装组合都没有以如此字面的方式掩盖其内容，但它们对发现的物体以及对艺术、诗歌和广泛精神思想的引用或暗示的复杂安排似乎是密码，没有任何先入为主的解决方案或解释。与格拉斯的许多作品一样，《普罗链序曲》提出了一种对知识意义上的灵知的探索，这种知识不能用话语来表达，而是通过对传统理性的经验性侵犯来实现。

在接下来的几页中，我概述了格拉斯的早期艺术创作，然后提出他的作品的特点是灵知学，或者通过超现实主义艺术的创作来寻找超理性的知识。然后我重点讨论格拉斯在 20 世纪 60 年代中期的作品和晚期作品中对死亡的处理。他对死亡的许多描绘将他的灵知学延伸到了死亡诊断的领域，他的艺术作品试图颂扬死亡，破译它的奥秘，并探索它转变的秘密。