Search This Blog

08 May 2008

Euro blotter art / anonymous artist (cause he/she might get busted)

Click for larger. Artist unknown. Typography & text beneath the blotter is mine.

In searching for images to filch for my Albert Hofmann Memorial Quilt, I discovered a huge worldwide underground treasury of Blotter Art -- easily in size and popularity and intense devotion the rival community to the Faux Postage / Mailart community.

Unlike the Mail Artists, almost all Blotter Art is anonymous, because most of the artwork began life as perforated sheets of blotter paper impregnated with tiny but highly effective doses of Dr. Hofmann's naughty "problem child," LSD-25.

LSD, of course, is banned all over Planet Earth for Fun Purposes, and banned for psychiatric therapeutic use, too, so those who manufacture and sell LSD are criminals, and the artists they hire to make their particular batch of LSD distinctive on the market are a little leery about splashing their names all over the sheets of blotter paper destined for the underground commerce.


Living in the USA during the 1960s can give you the false perception that LSD consumed for Fun is an overwhelmingly American Thing. Nope, it's not an American Thing. From the moment the formula leaked out of the Sandoz pharmaceutical laboratories in Switzerland, Europeans have been tossing it down their maw and wiggling to the craziest music and doing the most erratic things exactly like Americans (Northern Californians the most passionately).

This blotter art is Euro stuph, each perforated square will send you

"From the land
beyond beyond

From the world
past hope and fear

I bid you, Genie,
now appear."


(1 slice plain: What movie is that from?)

If you've ever taken some of this Bicycle brand of blotter acid, please Leave A Comment and a product review.


If Americans have any special claim to LSD for Fun, this is due to the pioneering efforts of a Harvard psychology professor, Timothy Leary, who, in his respectable suit-and-tie young professor days, became a test subject for early experiments, and very quickly concluded that LSD was the greatest Happy Gift to insufficiently happy humanity since nude sex. For the rest of his life he became a Loud and Ceaseless Public Prophet for and Champion of LSD, regularly in Deep Shit with the law, and the cultural, musical and political life that exploded into the 1960s would be unimaginable without Leary and a few other like-minded figures at the Center of the Cyclone.

If I got this right, Leary was the first husband of the mother of Uma Thurman, the family stayed close, so Leary was always Uncle Timmy as Uma was growing up. Dad is a professor of Oriental philosophy and religion, I think now at Columbia University.

A world without LSD -- unimaginable. Or imaginable: Colorless, gray, unthrilling, boring, routine, ordinary.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

hey bud,

long time no talk. it's sinbad. one of the first memories of going with my family to a drive-in cinema in karachi. saw a double feature; sinbad and jack the giant killer and a few other b-grade flicks that we used to be able to get our hands on. the drive-in today is unfortunately a thing of the past and hosts weddings.

James J. Olson said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
James J. Olson said...

Loyal V-Z readers will know that I served for several years at Marsh Chapel at Boston University, site of the infamous 'Good Friday' Experiment. One of the participants in this Experiment is still on the faculty at Boston University School of Theology, and still refuses to speak about it publicly. Privately, however, he assures this AV-P reporter that he was not in the control group, and 'shroomed intensely for most of the afternoon and into the evening. If you are at BU, go into Marsh Chapel and ask to be shown Robinson Chapel, where the volunteers were given their test substances, and where one of the most famous group trips was ever taken.

From our good friends at Wikipedia:

The Marsh Chapel Experiment (a.k.a. "the Good Friday Experiment") was run by Walter N. Pahnke, a graduate student in theology at Harvard Divinity School, under the supervision of Timothy Leary and the Harvard Psilocybin Project. The goal was to see if in religiously predisposed subjects, psilocybin (the active principle in psilocybin mushrooms) would act as reliable entheogen.

The experiment was conducted on Good Friday, 1962 at Boston University's Marsh Chapel. [1] Prior to the Good Friday service, graduate degree divinity student volunteers from the Boston area were randomly divided into two groups. In a double-blind experiment, half of the students received psilocybin, while a control group received a large dose of niacin. Niacin produces clear physiological changes and thus was used as a psychoactive placebo. In at least some cases, those who received the niacin initially believed they had received the psychoactive drug.

However, the feeling of face flushing (turning red, feeling hot and tingly) produced by niacin subsided over the first hour or so. Meanwhile, the effects of the psilocybin intensified over the first few hours. Almost all of the members of the experimental group reported experiencing profound religious experiences, providing empirical support for the notion that psychedelic drugs can facilitate religious experiences.

In 2006, a more rigorously controlled version of this experiment was conducted at Johns Hopkins University by Roland R. Griffiths, Ph.D., yielding very similar results.


Footnotes and other links here...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_Chapel_Experiment

Romina Hernández Díaz said...

Hi, i desing blotter

http://blotterartpastora.blogspot.com

by

Vleeptron Dude said...

Hola Pastora de Chile!

Me gusta tu Blotter Art blog!! Muy lindo!

Bienvenido a Planet Vleeptron!

Cuidado los beavers de Patagonia!!!

http://vleeptron.blogspot.com/2006/05/millions-of-beavers-marching-north.html

Vleeptron Dude said...

Huh?

tablet pc 10 pulgadas said...

This will not actually have effect, I think so.

Unknown said...

gOOD WORK SOR KEEP IT UP I THNL WE SHOULD HANDSHAKE http://psychedelicslounge.ca/

yanmaneee said...

off white jordan 1
off white shoes
golden goose sneakers
yeezy
golden goose
kyrie 6 shoes
a bathing ape
off white hoodie
golden goose
golden goose

Unknown said...

my site high quality designer replica review cheap designer bags replica click resources replica ysl handbags

taydoez said...

y7f23u0w62 u6u62j3s97 m0f16h8a68 r7e50v9i89 n9w51w5t39 g6e63f9y06