Figures from Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights” Come to Life as Fine Art Piñatas

in Art, Creativity | August 25th, 2017

Piñatas are a night­mare.

Oh sure, they look fes­tive, but seri­ous­ly, think twice before arm­ing a blind­fold­ed child (or a beer guz­zling adult guest) with a stur­dy stick and encour­ag­ing him to swing wild­ly.

There’s no need to wor­ry, how­ev­er, about any­one tak­ing a bat to the intri­cate Hierony­mus Bosch-inspired piñatas of Rober­to Benavidez, a self-described half-breed, South Tex­an, queer fig­u­ra­tive sculp­tor.

Even if you filled them with can­dy, the exte­ri­ors would be far more valu­able than any trea­sures con­tained with­in.

Bosch, of course, excelled at sce­nar­ios far more night­mar­ish than any­thing one might encounter in a back­yard par­ty. Benavidez seems less drawn to that aspect than the beau­ty of the fan­tas­ti­cal crea­tures pop­u­lat­ing The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights.

In fact, the major­i­ty of his papi­er-mâché homages are drawn from the par­a­disi­a­cal left pan­el of the famous trip­tych.

Not so the first in the series, 2013’s superbly titled Piña­ta of Earth­ly Delights #1, above

In the orig­i­nal, a mis­shapen water­bird uses its long beak to spear a cher­ry with which it tempts a pas­sel of weak-willed mor­tals, crowd­ed togeth­er inside a spiky pink blos­som.

In Benavidez’s ver­sion the lack of naked humans allows us to focus on the crea­ture, whose beak now pierces a sim­ple star-shaped piña­ta of its own.

Those with a fas­ci­na­tion for the antics of Bosch’s par­ty peo­ple are invit­ed to play a vari­a­tion of Where’s Wal­do, scour­ing the paint­ing for the inspi­ra­tion behind Can­dy Ass Bot­tom, above.

(Hint: if you’re grav­i­tat­ing toward those pos­te­ri­ors serv­ing as ves­sels for flutes, flocks of black­birds, or red hot pok­ers, you’re get­ting cold­er…)

While lit­tle is known about Bosch’s artis­tic train­ing, Benavidez majored in act­ing, before return­ing to his child­hood fas­ci­na­tion for sculpt­ing, tak­ing class­es in draw­ing, paint­ing, and bronze cast­ing at Pasade­na City Col­lege. Thrift and porta­bil­i­ty led him to begin explor­ing paper as his pri­ma­ry medi­um.

As he remarked on the blog of the crepe paper man­u­fac­tur­er Car­totec­ni­ca Rossi:

I was intrigued by the idea of tak­ing the piña­ta form, some­thing seen as cheap and dis­pos­able, and mov­ing it into the are­na of fine art.  I feel that my sculp­tur­al forms and fring­ing tech­niques set my work apart from what most peo­ple think of as a typ­i­cal piña­ta and the themes are more com­plex than is typ­i­cal.

Def­i­nite­ly.

View more of Rober­to Benavidez’ fine art piñatas, includ­ing those inspired by Hierony­mus Bosch on his web­site or Insta­gram feed.

via This Is Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Hierony­mus Bosch’s Bewil­der­ing Mas­ter­piece The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

Hierony­mus Bosch Fig­urines: Col­lect Sur­re­al Char­ac­ters from Bosch’s Paint­ings & Put Them on Your Book­shelf

Take a Mul­ti­me­dia Tour of the But­tock Song in Hierony­mus Bosch’s Paint­ing The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Discover the Paintings, Drawings & Collages of Sylvia Plath: Now on Display at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery

in Art, Literature, Poetry | August 24th, 2017

Sylvia Plath was a study in con­trasts. Her pop­u­lar­iza­tion as a con­fes­sion­al poet, fem­i­nist lit­er­ary icon, and trag­ic casu­al­ty of major depres­sion; her mid­dle-class Boston back­ground and tor­tured mar­riage to poet Ted Hugh­es—these are the high­lights of her biog­ra­phy, and, in many cas­es, all many peo­ple get to know about her. But “she was much more than that,” Dorothy Moss tells Men­tal Floss. As Vanes­sa Willough­by puts it in a stun­ning essay about her own encoun­ters with Plath’s work, “this woman was not the sum of a gas oven and two sleep­ing chil­dren nes­tled in their beds.”

Moss, a cura­tor at the Smith­son­ian Nation­al Por­trait Gallery has orga­nized an exhib­it fea­tur­ing many more sides of the poet­’s divid­ed, yet pur­pose­ful self, includ­ing her work as a visu­al artist. Read­ers of Plath’s poet­ry may not be sur­prised to learn she first intend­ed to become an artist. Her visu­al sense is so keen that ful­ly-formed images seem to leap out of poems like “Black­ber­ry­ing,” and into the reader’s hands; like the “high green mead­ows” she describes, her lines are “lit from with­in” by a deep appre­ci­a­tion for col­or, tex­ture, and per­spec­tive.

Black­ber­ries / Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes / Ebon in the hedges, fat / With blue-red juices. These they squan­der on my fin­gers.

The black­ber­ries come alive not only in their per­son­i­fi­ca­tion but through the kind of vivid lan­guage that could only come from some­one with a painter­ly way of look­ing at things. Plath “drew and paint­ed and sketched con­stant­ly as a child,” says Moss, and first enrolled at Smith Col­lege as an art major.

The exhi­bi­tion, the Nation­al Por­trait Gallery writes, “reveals how Plath shaped her iden­ti­ty visu­al­ly as she came of age as a writer in the 1950s.” Unsur­pris­ing­ly, her most fre­quent sub­ject is her­self. Her visu­al art, like her poet­ry, notes Men­tal Floss, “is often pre­oc­cu­pied with themes of self-iden­ti­ty.” But as in her elo­quent­ly-writ­ten let­ters and jour­nals, as well as her pub­lished lit­er­ary work, she is nev­er one self, but many—and not all of them vari­a­tions on the sly, yet brood­ing intel­lec­tu­al we see star­ing out at us from the well-known pho­tographs.

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured some of Plath’s draw­ings and self-por­traits here, but the Smith­son­ian exhib­it offers a con­sid­er­ably rich­er selec­tion than has been avail­able online. The ink and gouache por­trait at the top, for exam­ple, seems to draw from Marc Cha­gall in its mate­ri­als and swirling lines and col­ors. It also recalls lan­guage in a diary entry from 1953:

Look at that ugly dead mask here and do not for­get it. It is a chalk mask with dead dry poi­son behind it, like the death angel. It is what I was this fall, and what I nev­er want to be again.

The hands thrown up in defense or sur­ren­der, the black life­less eyes… Plath emerges from the ring of dead trees behind her like a suf­fer­ing saint. Anoth­er por­trait, fur­ther up also resem­bles a mask, call­ing to mind the ancient ori­gins of the word per­sona. But the style has total­ly changed, the tumult of brush­strokes smoothed out into clean geo­met­ric lines and uni­form patch­es of col­or. Three masks com­bine into one face, a trin­i­ty of Plaths. The poet always had a sense of her­self as divid­ed, refer­ring to two dis­tinct per­son­al­i­ties as her “brown-haired” and “plat­inum” selves. The brown-haired young girl made sev­er­al charm­ing sketch­es of her fam­i­ly, with humor­ous com­men­tary. (Her trou­bling father is telling­ly, per­haps, absent.)

Hers was an epit­o­me of stan­dard-issue 50s white, mid­dle class Amer­i­can child­hood, the kind of sup­pos­ed­ly idyl­lic upbring­ing which no small num­ber of peo­ple still remem­ber today in a glow­ing, nos­tal­gic haze. In Plath’s exca­va­tions of the iden­ti­ties that she cul­ti­vat­ed her­self and those she had pushed upon her, she gazed with rad­i­cal inten­si­ty at America’s patri­ar­chal social fic­tions, and the vio­lence and enti­tle­ment that lay beneath them. The col­lage above from 1960 presents us with the kind of lay­ered, cut-up, hybrid text that William Bur­roughs had begun exper­i­ment­ing with not long before. You can see more high­lights from the Plath exhib­it, “One Life: Sylvia Plath,” at the Nation­al Por­trait Gallery. Also fea­tured are Plath’s fam­i­ly pho­tos, books, let­ters, her typewriter—and, in gen­er­al, sev­er­al more dimen­sions of her life than most of us know.

“One Life: Sylvia Plath” runs from June 30, 2017 through May 20, 2018.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Sylvia Plath: Revis­it Her Sketch­es, Self-Por­traits, Draw­ings & Illus­trat­ed Let­ters

Hear Sylvia Plath Read 15 Poems From Her Final Col­lec­tion, Ariel, in 1962 Record­ing

Sylvia Plath’s 10 Back to School Com­mand­ments (1953)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Brooklyn Academy of Music Puts Online 70,000 Objects Documenting the History of the Performing Arts: Download Playbills, Posters & More

in Art, Dance, Opera, Theatre | August 23rd, 2017

Yes­ter­day the sad news broke that The Vil­lage Voice will dis­con­tin­ue its print edi­tion. Co-found­ed by Nor­man Mail­er in 1955 and pro­vid­ing New York­ers with savvy music writ­ing, raunchy advice columns, juicy exposés, reviews, enter­tain­ment list­ings, apart­ments, jobs, band mem­bers, ter­ri­ble room­mates, and pret­ty much any­thing else one might desire every week for over half a cen­tu­ry, the paper will be missed. Though it won’t dis­ap­pear online, the loss of the street-lev­el copy in its com­fort­ing­ly famil­iar red plas­tic box marks the abrupt end of an era. Those of us inclined to mourn its pass­ing can take some solace in the fact that so many of the city’s key cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions still per­sist.

Promi­nent among them, Brooklyn’s Acad­e­my of Music, or BAM, has been at it since 1861, when it began as the home of the Phil­har­mon­ic Soci­ety of Brook­lyn. It has inhab­it­ed its present Beaux Arts build­ing in Fort Greene since 1908. In its 150 years as a per­for­mance space for opera, clas­si­cal, avant-garde the­ater, dance, and music, and film, BAM has amassed quite a col­lec­tion of mem­o­ra­bil­ia. This year, on its cen­tu­ry-and-a-half anniver­sary, it has made 70,000 of those arti­facts avail­able to the pub­lic in its Leon Levy Dig­i­tal Archive. Like future issues of the Voice, you can­not hold these in your hand, unless you hap­pen to be one of the museum’s cura­tors. But “researchers—or any­one else inter­est­ed,” writes The New York Times, “can cre­ate per­son­al­ized col­lec­tions based on spe­cif­ic artists, com­pa­nies or eras.”

The his­to­ry rep­re­sent­ed here is vast and deep, by a young country’s stan­dards. “Every pres­i­den­tial can­di­date made cam­paign stops there before there was tele­vi­sion,” says for­mer BAM pres­i­dent Karen Brooks Hop­kins. “Mary Todd Lin­coln was in the audi­ence dur­ing the open­ing week of fes­tiv­i­ties. Then you have [Rudolph] Nuryev mak­ing his first per­for­mance in the West just after he defects, [Martha] Gra­ham per­form­ing her last per­for­mance on stage….” These land­mark moments notwith­stand­ing, BAM has earned a rep­u­ta­tion as a home for avant-garde per­for­mance art, and the col­lec­tion cer­tain­ly reflects that dimen­sion among the 40,000 artists rep­re­sent­ed.

We have fur­ther up the post­card Kei­th Har­ing designed for a 1984 Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane piece called Secret Pas­tures (Har­ing also designed the sets). We have the poster above for a 1981 per­for­mance of Philip Glass’ Satya­gra­ha, his opera based on the life of Gand­hi. And below, a poster for the 1983 world pre­mier of Lau­rie Anderson’s Unit­ed States: Parts I‑IV. These objects come from BAM’s Next Wave Fes­ti­val col­lec­tion, which con­tains many thou­sands of pho­tographs, play­bills, and posters from the space’s more exper­i­men­tal side, many, though not all of them, down­load­able.

Between the Civ­il War mem­o­ra­bil­ia and mod­ernist doc­u­ments, you’ll find all sorts of fas­ci­nat­ing ephemera: pho­tos of a very young Meryl Streep and Christo­pher Lloyd in a 1977 pro­duc­tion of Hap­py End at the Chelsea The­ater dur­ing a BAM Spring Series, or of an old­er Patrick Stew­art in a 2008 Mac­beth. Just below, we have a charm­ing play­ing card fea­tur­ing the Brook­lyn Acad­e­my of Music’s Peter Jay Sharp build­ing in 1909, the year after it was built. It’s an impos­ing struc­ture that seems like it might last for­ev­er, though much of the vibrant cre­ative work fea­tured year after year at BAM may some­day also move entire­ly into dig­i­tal spaces. Enter the com­plete BAM dig­i­tal archive here.

via The New York Times/Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The The­ater Dic­tio­nary: A Free Video Guide to The­atre Lin­go

A Min­i­mal Glimpse of Philip Glass

Google Gives You a 360° View of the Per­form­ing Arts, From the Roy­al Shake­speare Com­pa­ny to the Paris Opera Bal­let

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Artists Put a Hidden Message in Their Letter Resigning from President’s Committee on the Arts & the Humanities

in Art, Current Affairs, Politics | August 21st, 2017

It was­n’t the most high pro­file mass res­ig­na­tion of last week. (The CEOs on Trump’s busi­ness advi­so­ry coun­cils got that dis­tinc­tion.) But it was arguably the most cre­ative one. Last Fri­day, “all 16 of the promi­nent artists, authors, per­form­ers and archi­tects on the President’s Com­mit­tee on the Arts and the Human­i­ties resigned,” reports The New York Times. And while their res­ig­na­tion let­ter did­n’t mince words (read it online here), it did take the added step of encod­ing in its text a short mes­sage for POTUS. Cir­cle the first let­ter of each para­graph and what do you get? RESIST, the mantra of 2017.

In oth­er relat­ed news, the admin­is­tra­tion announced that Trump will skip the annu­al Kennedy Cen­ter Hon­ors this year–just the fourth time that a pres­i­dent has missed this annu­al nation­al cel­e­bra­tion of the arts. This year’s hon­orees include Glo­ria Este­fan, LL COOL J, Nor­man Lear, Lionel Richie, and Car­men de Laval­lade.

via Boing Boing/Art­net

Relat­ed Con­tent:

‘Stair­way to Heav­en’: Watch a Mov­ing Trib­ute to Led Zep­pelin at The Kennedy Cen­ter

William Faulkn­er Resigns From His Post Office Job With a Spec­tac­u­lar Let­ter (1924)

Watch “Don’t Be a Suck­er!,” the 1947 US Gov­ern­ment Anti-Hatred Film That’s Rel­e­vant Again in 2017

Han­nah Arendt Explains How Pro­pa­gan­da Uses Lies to Erode All Truth & Moral­i­ty: Insights from The Ori­gins of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism

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Artistic Maps of Pakistan & India Show the Embroidery Techniques of Their Different Regions

in Art, Maps | August 19th, 2017

Jour­nal­ist Saima Mir post­ed to Twit­ter this “map of Pak­istan show­ing the embroi­dery tech­niques of its regions.” And, sure enough, it led to some­one sur­fac­ing a cor­re­spond­ing map of Pak­istan’s neigh­bor, India. The under­ly­ing mes­sage of the maps? It’s to show, as @AlmostLived not­ed, “how diverse ele­ments come togeth­er to make beau­ti­ful things.” The map above was orig­i­nal­ly pro­duced by Gen­er­a­tion, a Pak­istani fash­ion com­pa­ny. We’re not clear on the ori­gin of the India map, unfor­tu­nate­ly.

via Boing Boing

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

New BBC Drama­ti­za­tion of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Chil­dren Now Stream­ing Free for a Lim­it­ed Time

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play an Enchant­i­ng Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

Pak­istani Immi­grant Goes to a Led Zep­pelin Con­cert, Gets Inspired to Become a Musi­cian & Then Sells 30 Mil­lion Albums

Intro­duc­tion to Indi­an Phi­los­o­phy: A Free Online Course

India’s Answer to M.I.T. Presents 268 Free Online Cours­es (in Eng­lish)

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Why Jim Carrey Needs to Paint: “Painting Frees Me, from the Past and Future, from Regret and Worry”

in Art, Comedy, Creativity, Film | August 18th, 2017

In his top-gross­ing come­dies, actor Jim Car­rey dis­played an antic qual­i­ty that seemed to rule over his per­son­al life as well. While oth­er stars used inter­views as oppor­tu­ni­ties to nor­malise them­selves to the civil­ians in the audi­ence, clown prince Car­rey was relent­less, an uncon­trol­lable fire hose of fun­ny faces and voic­es that felt not unlike demons.

All that out­put was exhaust­ing, and caused many to won­der if the man was capa­ble of calm­ing down long enough to receive any mean­ing­ful input.

His per­for­mances in films such as the Tru­man Show and Eter­nal Sun­shine of the Spot­less Mind sug­gest­ed that per­haps he was…

As did the rev­e­la­tion that he spent a lot of his child­hood in his bed­room draw­ing — the flip side to his crazy liv­ing room per­for­mances, staged, in part, to keep an emo­tion­al­ly trou­bled fam­i­ly from sink­ing any low­er. He also drew in school, aggra­vat­ing teach­ers with unau­tho­rised por­traits.

As Car­rey recalled in a 2011 inter­view:

After I became famous, my sixth-grade teacher sent me sketch­es she had con­fis­cat­ed. She kept them because she thought they were cute. She also knew how to har­ness the ener­gy. If I was qui­et, she would give me 15 min­utes at the end of class to per­form. Today, I’d be on Rital­in, and Ace Ven­tu­ra would have nev­er been made.

These days, the fun­ny man seems to have turned his back on per­form­ing in favor of a more con­tem­pla­tive visu­al arts prac­tice. His most recent act­ing cred­it is over a year old. As David Bushell’s doc­u­men­tary short, I Need­ed Col­or, above reveals, the quan­ti­ty of Carrey’s out­put is still impres­sive, but there’s a qual­i­ta­tive dif­fer­ence where the artist is con­cerned.

His face and body are calm, and the crazed imper­a­tive to enter­tain seems to have left him. Watch­ing him go about his work, one is remind­ed of car­toon­ist and edu­ca­tor Lyn­da Barry’s obser­va­tions about the neu­ro­log­i­cal con­nec­tion between the abil­i­ty to go down the rab­bit hole of art and a child’s men­tal health:

I think it’s what keeps us sane. I think about how, if I’m sit­ting here with a kid who’s four years old and I have all these mark­ers and I say, do you want to draw, and that kid’s too freaked out to draw, we’d be wor­ried about that kid a lit­tle bit, wouldn’t you? We’d be wor­ried about them emo­tion­al­ly. OK, on this side I have a 40-year-old, same sit­u­a­tion, she’s too scared to draw, but we’re not wor­ried about her. Why? Because there is a tac­it under­stand­ing that some­thing is going on when kids are play­ing or [draw­ing] that has some­thing to do with their men­tal health. All of us know that if a kid is not allowed to play till he’s 21, he’s going to be a nut. He’s going to be a psy­chopath, actu­al­ly. The brain stud­ies they’ve done of kids in deep play show that their brains are iden­ti­cal to an adult’s brain that is in cre­ative con­cen­tra­tion. We know that play is essen­tial for men­tal health. I would argue that so is draw­ing.

Art saves lives, right?

Carrey’s ear­li­er suc­cess affords him the lux­u­ry of time and mon­ey to immerse him­self in his new voca­tion with­out lim­it­ing him­self to any one style or medi­um. Giant paint­ings, tiny sculp­tures, works that involve black light, squeegees, or shred­ded can­vas stitched back togeth­er with wire are all crick­et.

Giv­en his movie star sta­tus, nasty reviews are to be expect­ed, but approval is no longer what Car­rey is seek­ing:

When I paint and sculpt it stops the world for me, as if all time has been sus­pend­ed. My spir­it is com­plete­ly engaged, my heart is engaged, and I feel com­plete­ly free. I think I just like cre­at­ing. All of it is a por­tal into present, into absolute, qui­et, gen­tle, still­ness. This involve­ment, this pres­ence, is free­dom from con­cern. That’s har­mo­ny with the uni­verse.

Those who can’t make it to Sig­na­ture Gal­leries in Las Vegas this Sep­tem­ber 23 for a $10,000 per cou­ple open­ing of Carrey’s paint­ings can take a gan­der at his work for free here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behold The Paint­ings of David Bowie: Neo-Expres­sion­ist Self Por­traits, Illus­tra­tions of Iggy Pop, and Much More

Jim Car­rey Sings a Pret­ty Damn Good Cov­er of The Bea­t­les “I Am the Wal­rus”

Art Exhib­it on Bill Mur­ray Opens in the UK

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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When Gonzo Artist Ralph Steadman Illustrated George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1995)

in Art, Books, Literature | August 16th, 2017

As a nov­el­ist, George Orwell did not traf­fic in sub­tleties, but then nei­ther did the authors of Medieval moral­i­ty plays. The alle­gor­i­cal Ani­mal Farm per­forms a sim­i­lar, if sec­u­lar, func­tion, giv­ing us unam­bigu­ous vil­lainy and clear didac­tic intent. Orwell not­ed in his essay “Why I Write” that he meant the book to “fuse polit­i­cal pur­pose and artis­tic pur­pose into one whole.“ Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished with the sub­ti­tle A Fairy Sto­ry, the nov­el car­i­ca­tures Stal­in­ism and the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion, and Orwell left no mys­tery as to his intent when he com­ment­ed in the pref­ace to a 1947 Ukrain­ian edi­tion that he meant the book to “end on a loud note of dis­cord” meant to sig­ni­fy what he saw as the insta­bil­i­ty of the Tehran Con­fer­ence.

Lead­en state­ments like these aside, Orwell swore he “did not wish to com­ment on the work,” writ­ing, “if it does not speak for itself, it is a fail­ure.” The book does indeed speak, in two par­tic­u­lar ways: its vivid­ly grotesque char­ac­ter­i­za­tions of the humans and ani­mals on the farm and its indeli­ble col­lec­tion of pro­pa­gan­dis­tic slo­gans.

These are the fea­tures best cap­tured by gonzo illus­tra­tor Ralph Stead­man, famous for his col­lab­o­ra­tions with Hunter S. Thomp­son. Pub­lished in 1995—with the Fairy Sto­ry sub­ti­tle restored—the Stead­man-illus­trat­ed 50th anniver­sary edi­tion real­izes anoth­er pre­vi­ous vari­a­tion on the book’s title: Ani­mal Farm: A Con­tem­po­rary Satire.

These images draw out the exag­ger­at­ed absur­di­ties of the nov­el as only an artist with Steadman’s twist­ed, sur­re­al­ist sense of visu­al humor could. They are pro­found­ly effec­tive, though there’s no telling what Orwell would have thought of them. Steadman’s car­i­ca­tures uni­ver­sal­ize the book’s dra­ma, pro­vid­ing the kind of stock char­ac­ters we find in folk­lore, “fairy sto­ries,” and reli­gious alle­go­ry. But Orwell wrote that he wished us not to mis­take his express polit­i­cal intent: “It was of the utmost impor­tance to me that peo­ple in West­ern Europe should see the Sovi­et regime for what it real­ly was…. I have been con­vinced that the destruc­tion of the Sovi­et myth was essen­tial if we want­ed a revival of the Social­ist move­ment.”

Stead­man, to his great cred­it, felt no need to lit­er­al­ize Orwell’s stat­ed inten­tions in his illus­tra­tions, but rather took the book’s bizarre world on its own terms. You can read more quotes from Orwell’s earnest, intend­ed pref­ace for the book, restored in the Stead­man edi­tion, at Brain Pick­ings, where you’ll also find a good num­ber of the illus­tra­tions as well. Copies of the book can be pur­chased on Ama­zon.

Stead­man not only applied his skill as a car­i­ca­tur­ist to Orwell’s fic­tion­al farm denizens, we should note, but also to the author him­self. He made sev­er­al sketch­es of Orwell, such as that below of the writer with a cage of rats around his neck. You can see sev­er­al more of Steadman’s draw­ings of Orwell at The Guardian.

via Brain Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Break­ing Bad Illus­trat­ed by Gonzo Artist Ralph Stead­man

Pink Floyd Adapts George Orwell’s Ani­mal Farm into Their 1977 Con­cept Album, Ani­mals (a Cri­tique of Late Cap­i­tal­ism, Not Stal­in)

Gun Nut William S. Bur­roughs & Gonzo Illus­tra­tor Ralph Stead­man Make Polaroid Por­traits Togeth­er

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Artist Draws 9 Portraits While on LSD: Inside the 1950s Experiments to Turn LSD into a “Creativity Pill”

in Art, Creativity, Psychology, Science | August 15th, 2017

LSD was first syn­the­sized in 1938 by chemist Albert Hoff­man in a Swiss lab­o­ra­to­ry but only attained infamy almost two decades lat­er, when it became part of a series of gov­ern­ment exper­i­ments. At the same time, a UC Irvine psy­chi­a­trist, Oscar Janiger (“Oz” to his friends), con­duct­ed his own stud­ies under very dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances. “Unlike most researchers, Janiger want­ed to cre­ate a ‘nat­ur­al’ set­ting,” writes Brandy Doyle for MAPS (the Mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary Asso­ci­a­tion for Psy­che­del­ic Stud­ies). He rea­soned that “there was noth­ing espe­cial­ly neu­tral about a lab­o­ra­to­ry or hos­pi­tal room,” so he “rent­ed a house out­side of LA, in which his sub­jects could have a rel­a­tive­ly non-direct­ed expe­ri­ence in a sup­port­ive envi­ron­ment.”

Janiger want­ed his sub­jects to make cre­ative dis­cov­er­ies in a state of height­ened con­scious­ness. The study sought, he wrote, to “illu­mi­nate the phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal nature of the LSD expe­ri­ence,” to see whether the drug could effec­tive­ly be turned into a cre­ativ­i­ty pill. He found, over a peri­od last­ing from 1954 to 1962 (when the exper­i­ments were ter­mi­nat­ed), that among his approx­i­mate­ly 900 sub­jects, those who were in ther­a­py “had a high rate of pos­i­tive response,” but those not in ther­a­py “found the expe­ri­ence much less pleas­ant.” Janiger’s find­ings have con­tributed to the research that orga­ni­za­tions like MAPS have done on psy­choac­tive drugs in ther­a­peu­tic set­tings. The exper­i­ments also pro­duced a body of art­work made by study par­tic­i­pants on acid.

Janiger invit­ed over 100 pro­fes­sion­al artists into the study and had them pro­duce over 250 paint­ings and draw­ings. The series of eight draw­ings you see here most like­ly came from one of those artists (though “the records of the iden­ti­ty of the prin­ci­ple researcher have been lost,” writes Live­Science). In the psych-rock-scored video at the top see the pro­gres­sion of increas­ing­ly abstract draw­ings the artist made over the course of his 8‑hour trip. He report­ed on his per­cep­tions and sen­sa­tions through­out the expe­ri­ence, not­ing, at what seems to be the drug’s peak moment at 2.5 and 3 hours in, “I feel that my con­scious­ness is sit­u­at­ed in the part of my body that’s active—my hand, my elbow, my tongue…. I am… every­thing is… changed… they’re call­ing… your face… inter­wo­ven… who is….”

Trip­py, but there’s much more to the exper­i­ment than its imme­di­ate effects on artists’ brains and sketch­es. As Janiger’s col­league Mar­lene Dobkin de Rios writes in her defin­i­tive book on his work, “all of the artists who par­tic­i­pat­ed in Janiger’s project said that LSD not only rad­i­cal­ly changed their style but also gave them new depths to under­stand the use of col­or, form, light, or the way these things are viewed in a frame of ref­er­ence. Their art, they claimed, changed its essen­tial char­ac­ter as a con­se­quence of their expe­ri­ences.” Psy­chol­o­gist Stan­ley Kripp­n­er made sim­i­lar dis­cov­er­ies, and “defined the term psy­che­del­ic artist” to describe those who, as in Janiger’s stud­ies “gained a far greater insight into the nature of art and the aes­thet­ic idea,” Dobkin de Rios writes.

Artis­tic productions—paintings, poems, sketch­es, and writ­ings that stemmed from the experience—often show a rad­i­cal depar­ture from the artist’s cus­tom­ary mode of expres­sion… the artists’ gen­er­al opin­ion was that their work became more expres­sion­is­tic and demon­strat­ed a vast­ly greater degree of free­dom and orig­i­nal­i­ty.

The work of the unknown artist here takes on an almost mys­ti­cal qual­i­ty after a while. The project began “serendip­i­tous­ly” when one of Janiger’s vol­un­teers in 1954 insist­ed on being able to draw dur­ing the dos­ing. “After his LSD expe­ri­ence,” writes Dobkin de Rios, “the artist was very emphat­ic that it would be most reveal­ing to allow oth­er artists to go through this process of per­cep­tu­al change.” Janiger was con­vinced, as were many of his more famous test sub­jects.

Janiger report­ed­ly intro­duced LSD to Cary Grant, Anais Nin, Jack Nichol­son, and Aldous Hux­ley dur­ing guid­ed ther­a­py ses­sions. Still, he is not near­ly as well-known as oth­er LSD pio­neers like Ken Kesey and Tim­o­thy Leary, in part because, writes the psy­choac­tive research site Erowid, “his data remained large­ly unpub­lished dur­ing his life­time,” and he was not him­self an artist or media per­son­al­i­ty (though he was a cousin of Allen Gins­berg).

Janiger not only changed the con­scious­ness of unnamed and famous artists with LSD, but also exper­i­ment­ed with DMT with Alan Watts and fel­low psy­chi­a­trist Humphry Osmond (who coined the word “psy­che­del­ic”), and con­duct­ed research on pey­ote with Dobkin de Rios. To a great degree, we have him to thank (or blame) for the explo­sion of psy­che­del­ic art and phi­los­o­phy that flowed out of the ear­ly six­ties and indeli­bly changed the cul­ture. At Live­Science, you can see a slideshow of these draw­ings with com­men­tary from Yale physi­cian Andrew Sewell on what might be hap­pen­ing in the trip­ping artist’s brain.

Note: IAI Acad­e­my has just released a short course called The Sci­ence of Psy­che­delics. You can enroll in it here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare Footage Shows US and British Sol­diers Get­ting Dosed with LSD in Gov­ern­ment-Spon­sored Tests (1958 + 1964)

Hofmann’s Potion: 2002 Doc­u­men­tary Revis­its His­to­ry of LSD

Ken Kesey Talks About the Mean­ing of the Acid Tests

Aldous Huxley’s Most Beau­ti­ful, LSD-Assist­ed Death: A Let­ter from His Wid­ow

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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