Time to talk about dope, substances which alter perception, and to consider their relevance to art and their effect on both the makers of art and their audience. There are two major drugs in opposition in our culture, already almost equally divided between two different versions of reality, mingled together and yet living on different planets, seeing remarkably different stuff. The contrast in attitude engendered by each first became apparent in the Viet Nam era on both sides of the ocean as Jimmy Hendrix solos becoming a shared experience in clouds of smoke, while liquor-loving politicians and generals plotted strategy and carpet bombed. In Vegas, Sinatra appeared at the microphone with whiskey and a cigarette talking all patriotic like a war hero, apparently because he played one in a movie, but he only did it when he was drunk. We all know the drill, families have both, and haven’t all of us dabbled? Maybe it’s time to ask, when it comes to art can these different states of mind be seen? Artists are known to engage in fringy behavior in the first place, many experiment with substances and sometimes we can guess.
There are other drugs that influence art, variants and subgroups with their own characteristic intoxications. Beardsley I’ll bet was doing opium, he left clues. In a complex fantasy drawing a small pan can be seen throwing his pipe down in disgust, such as that. Picasso once allowed that the smell of opium wasn’t the worst smell in the world -- sometimes he talked backwards. Diz needed his ‘vitamins’ to blow real high and fast on his flugelhorn while Coltrane became so introspective he finally left all together, but society couldn’t sustain their particular predilections wide spread, coke and skag. It’s either booze or weed in the USA, each used as an escape from the oppressive dullness of sobriety, but they’re not the same.
Abstract expressionism arose in the early fifties, drenched in alcohol, its practitioners on their way to early graves. This drug shrinks reality and isolates its user on an island of dependency until finally they only see themselves, and this would include the ‘privatized’ vision they applied to canvas. As a painter Jackson Pollock was categorically nihilistic, his universe was chaotic and a tantrum was his response. It’s all there. His entire movement was enamored of drug store Freudianism which proposed a deeper wiser layer than this sorry twisted self-effacing rag we call a personality. This brilliant sub-conscious was bound to be a better painter, much more profound, and its extremely large color explorations featuring drips, smears, and pours were baffling and impervious to criticism from any corner. This sort of art values reputation and provenance, and a discernible price point, over whatever image is on the front -- a matter of taste who cares?
These days the variety of art available is staggering, a gamut of styles from first attempt accidental to compulsively precise renderings of almost anything, and the question becomes what does the public respond to. Well times they are a’changing and it’s encoded in the law. A native plant which could have caused a person just ten years ago to lose their vehicle, their house, the entire farm, along with their personal liberty, has suddenly unmasked, the menial despised reprobate morphing into the jedi hero here to save the world, a boon to agriculture, medicine, on and on. I wouldn’t know what artists are using, but do suspect that when the medieval sanctions are lifted for everyone, an art that was there all along will begin to be seen.
There are other drugs that influence art, variants and subgroups with their own characteristic intoxications. Beardsley I’ll bet was doing opium, he left clues. In a complex fantasy drawing a small pan can be seen throwing his pipe down in disgust, such as that. Picasso once allowed that the smell of opium wasn’t the worst smell in the world -- sometimes he talked backwards. Diz needed his ‘vitamins’ to blow real high and fast on his flugelhorn while Coltrane became so introspective he finally left all together, but society couldn’t sustain their particular predilections wide spread, coke and skag. It’s either booze or weed in the USA, each used as an escape from the oppressive dullness of sobriety, but they’re not the same.
Abstract expressionism arose in the early fifties, drenched in alcohol, its practitioners on their way to early graves. This drug shrinks reality and isolates its user on an island of dependency until finally they only see themselves, and this would include the ‘privatized’ vision they applied to canvas. As a painter Jackson Pollock was categorically nihilistic, his universe was chaotic and a tantrum was his response. It’s all there. His entire movement was enamored of drug store Freudianism which proposed a deeper wiser layer than this sorry twisted self-effacing rag we call a personality. This brilliant sub-conscious was bound to be a better painter, much more profound, and its extremely large color explorations featuring drips, smears, and pours were baffling and impervious to criticism from any corner. This sort of art values reputation and provenance, and a discernible price point, over whatever image is on the front -- a matter of taste who cares?
These days the variety of art available is staggering, a gamut of styles from first attempt accidental to compulsively precise renderings of almost anything, and the question becomes what does the public respond to. Well times they are a’changing and it’s encoded in the law. A native plant which could have caused a person just ten years ago to lose their vehicle, their house, the entire farm, along with their personal liberty, has suddenly unmasked, the menial despised reprobate morphing into the jedi hero here to save the world, a boon to agriculture, medicine, on and on. I wouldn’t know what artists are using, but do suspect that when the medieval sanctions are lifted for everyone, an art that was there all along will begin to be seen.
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