Game Three

The Game Three depicted here is, of course, the very famous third game of the 1972 World Chess Championship between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky. This was the turning point of the match, and a game that is broadly considered to be one of the finest chess games ever played. It was also the first time that Fischer had ever beaten Spassky. The reflecting orb here takes the position of Fischer's king at the critical moment of the game. My interest here, however, is not on the history itself. I don't endeavor to depict narrative moments or historical allusions. Instead I wanted to illustrate the feeling of that psychological state. The mind of the subject expanding to encompass a larger and larger set of possibilities until, at some moment, a Hegelian unity emerges. The noise and chaos of the ever-expanding set of potentialities becomes whittled down by logic and order which act to negate the furious rush of possibilities. Rather than a set of ideas, or a cacophony of thoughts, only one thought remains which despite its apparent monadism is concretely composed of a near infinite ordered set. This is what might be colloquially referred to as a 'moment of clarity', or a 'eureka moment'. I would call it the moment of true synthesis, which by its nature contains also its thesis and antithesis.