{ feuilleton }

Standing boy pulling ropes (1962).
The chiaroscuro above looks like a photo print but is apparently a painting. I’ve seen Bliss’s name mentioned a few times before but he remains rather difficult to track down online, most of the visible works being on auction sites. What there is consists mostly of young men in swim suits, [...]

‘Hallucination’ fish netted in English Channel | Mediterranean Sarpa salpa, said to cause LSD-like effects, turns up off Cornwall.

Further: the second version of Ken Kesey’s Merry Prankster bus.
The word psychedelic, like surreal before it, slipped from its original meaning through appropriation. Humphrey Osmond’s neologism was first coined in drug-related correspondence with Aldous Huxley in 1957 and was specifically intended to describe the “mind-manifesting” quality of the hallucinogenic drug experience. The drug-inspired art and [...]

It’s perhaps fitting that in the same week (almost the same day) that the Large Hadron Collider was finally switched on, Apple should release iTunes v. 8.0. The improved Visualizer for this application generates patterns not so far removed from the graphics created to explain quantum interactions or cosmic motion. (And while we’re discussing quantum [...]

‘Father of LSD’ dies aged 102
| Albert Hofmann, RIP.

Albert Hofmann by Alex Grey.
Albert Hofmann, discoverer of LSD, 102 years old today. Last month Scientific American reported that hallucinogenic drugs are once again being considered as a way to treat psychiatric disorders.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of LSD
• The trip goes on
• Albert Hofmann
• Hep cats

A few servings of iTunes jelly.
I’ve spent the past week or so enjoying the delights of Leopard, the 10.5 iteration of Apple’s OS X operating system, but have only just noticed the new Visualizer patterns in the latest version of iTunes. I don’t use the Visualizer much, especially since the introduction of Front Row, Apple’s [...]

“Mirage in time—image of long-vanish’d pre-human city.”
A couple pieces of news to catch up with here, both Lovecraft-related which is very apt for the month of Halloween. The first is the work I gave a teaser view of in August, a commission for Maison d’Ailleurs, the Museum of Science Fiction, Utopia and Extraordinary Journeys [...]

The Digger issue, August 1968.
Here’s something of major importance, The Realist Archive Project. Four complete issues online so far, with a promise of all 146 issues to be uploaded eventually. The Realist started out as a satirical magazine in the late Fifties and moved into the slipstream of the counter-culture as the Sixties progressed. [...]

Not art inspired by LSD but drawings done whilst under its influence.
These 9 drawings were done by an artist under the influence of LSD—part of a test conducted by the US government during its dalliance with psychotomimetic drugs in the late 1950s. The artist was given a dose of LSD-25 and free access to an [...]

The trip goes on.
Whatever became of LSD?

Poster by Arik Roper.
Radical Living Papers
A history of the free, alternative, counter-culture and underground press, 1965–75
Gavin Brown’s enterprise at PASSERBY
436 W. 15th Street,
New York, NY 10011
February 2–March 7, 2007
Opening reception: Friday, February 2, 2007, 6pm.
The Council for the Fortieth Anniversary of The Summer of Love with Gavin Brown’s enterprise opens and invites you to an [...]

Dr Hofmann by Dean Chamberlain.
Happy birthday to the discoverer of LSD, 101 today.

A San Francisco mathematician takes a trip on LSD with his cat,
who is on the drug too. He does this every other week.
From ‘LSD: The Exploding Threat of the Mind Drug that Got Out of Control‘,
Life magazine, March 25, 1966.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• German opium smokers, 1900

America’s most vital cultural bulletin. Free PDF download.
How nature droners GROWING found their flow. By Peter Relic. Photography by Eden Batki.
Swiss anthropologist-author JEREMY NARBY talks with Jay Babcock about what hallucinogens like LSD and the Amazonian drink ayahuasca have to teach us in the 21st century. Introduction by author Erik Davis, with a full-color illustration [...]

Metamorphosis of Hitler’s Face into a Moonlit Landscape with Accompaniment (1958).
Impressions de la Haute Mongolie (1976/Salvador Dali/José Montes-Baquer/Germany)
In any list of films I’d currently most like to see but can’t due to lack of availability, this bizarre “documentary” collaboration between Salvador Dalí and José Montes-Baquer would be near the top of the list. I saw [...]