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Psychedelia usually refers to astyle or aesthetic that is resembled in the psychedelicsubculture of the 1960s and thepsychedelic experience produced by certainpsychoactive substances. This includespsychedelic art,psychedelic music andstyle of dress during that era. This was primarily generated by people who usedpsychedelic drugs such asLSD,mescaline (found inpeyote) andpsilocybin (found inmagic mushrooms) and also non-users who were participants and aficionados of this subculture. Psychedelic art and music typically recreate or reflect the experience ofaltered consciousness. Psychedelic art uses highlydistorted,surreal visuals, brightcolors and fullspectrums andanimation (includingcartoons) to evoke, convey, or enhance the psychedelic experience.
Psychedelic music usesdistortedelectric guitar,Indian music elements such as thesitar andtabla,[1]electronic effects,sound effects andreverb, and elaborate studio effects, such as playing tapes backwards or panning the music from one side to another.[2]
Apsychedelic experience is characterized by the striking perception of aspects of one's mind previously unknown, or by the creative exuberance of the mind liberated from its ostensibly ordinary fetters. Psychedelic states are an array of experiences including changes ofperception such ashallucinations,synesthesia, alteredstates of awareness or focused consciousness, variation in thought patterns,trance orhypnotic states,mystical states, and other mind alterations.[3]
These processes can lead some people to experience changes in mental operation defining theirself-identity (whether in momentary acuity or chronic development) different enough from their previous normal state that it can excite feelings of newly formed understanding such asrevelation,illumination,confusion, andpsychosis. Individuals who use psychedelic drugs for spiritual purposes or self-discovery are commonly referred to aspsychonauts.
The term was first coined as a noun in 1956 bypsychiatristHumphry Osmond as an alternative descriptor forhallucinogenic drugs in the context ofpsychedelic psychotherapy.[4] It is irregularly[5] derived from theGreek words ψυχήpsychḗ 'soul, mind' and δηλείνdēleín 'to manifest', with the meaning "mind manifesting," the implication being that psychedelics can develop unused potentials of the human mind.[6] The term was loathed by AmericanethnobotanistRichard Schultes but championed by American psychologistTimothy Leary.[7]
Seeking a name for the experience induced byLSD, Osmond contactedAldous Huxley, a personal acquaintance and advocate for the therapeutic use of the substance. Huxley coined the term "phanerothyme," from the Greek terms for "manifest" (φανερός) and "spirit" (θύμος). In a letter to Osmond, he wrote:
To make this mundane world sublime,
Take half a gram of phanerothyme
To which Osmond responded:
To fathom Hell or soar angelic,
Just take a pinch of psychedelic[8]
It was on this term that Osmond eventually settled, because it was "clear, euphonious and uncontaminated by other associations."[9] This mongrel spelling of the word 'psychedelic' was loathed by AmericanethnobotanistRichard Evans Schultes, but championed by Timothy Leary, who thought it sounded better.[10] Due to the expanded use of the term "psychedelic" in pop culture and a perceived incorrect verbal formulation,Carl A.P. Ruck, Jeremy Bigwood,Danny Staples,Jonathan Ott, andR. Gordon Wasson proposed the term "entheogen" to describe the religious or spiritual experience produced by such substances.[11]
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From the second half of the 1950s,Beat Generation writers likeWilliam Burroughs,Jack Kerouac andAllen Ginsberg[12] wrote about and took drugs, includingcannabis andBenzedrine, raising awareness and helping to popularise their use.[13] In the same periodLysergic acid diethylamide, better known as LSD, or "acid" (at the time a legal drug), began to be used in the US and UK as an experimental treatment, initially promoted as a potential cure for mental illness.[14]
In the early 1960s, the use of LSD and other hallucinogens was advocated by proponents of the new "consciousness expansion", such asTimothy Leary,Alan Watts,Aldous Huxley andArthur Koestler,[15][16] their writings profoundly influenced the thinking of the new generation of youth.[17] There had long been a culture of drug use amongjazz andblues musicians, and use of drugs (including cannabis,peyote,mescaline and LSD[18]) had begun to grow among folk and rock musicians, who also began to include drug references in their songs.[19][nb 1] In the UK rock scene, some notable users were groups such as theRolling Stones,the Beatles andthe Moody Blues.[21]
By the mid-1960s, the psychedelic life-style had already developed in California, and an entiresubculture developed. This was particularly true in San Francisco, due in part to the first major underground LSD factory, established there byOwsley Stanley.[22] There was also an emerging music scene of folk clubs, coffee houses and independent radio stations catering to a population of students at nearbyBerkeley, and to free thinkers that had gravitated to the city.[23]
From 1964, theMerry Pranksters, a loose group that developed around novelistKen Kesey, sponsored theAcid Tests, a series of events based around the taking of LSD (supplied by Stanley), accompanied by light shows, film projection and discordant, improvised music known as thepsychedelic symphony.[24][25] The Pranksters helped popularize LSD use through their road trips across America in a psychedelically decorated school bus, which involved distributing the drug and meeting with major figures of the beat movement, and through publications about their activities such asTom Wolfe'sThe Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968).[26]
Leary was a well-known proponent of the use of psychedelics, as wasAldous Huxley.[27] However, both advanced widely different opinions on the broad use of psychedelics bystate andcivil society. Leary promulgated the idea of such substances as apanacea, while Huxley suggested that only the cultural and intellectual elite should partake of entheogens systematically.[28]
In the1960s, the use of psychedelic drugs became widespread in modernWestern culture, particularly in theUnited States andBritain. The movement is credited toMichael Hollingshead who arrived in America from London in 1965. He was sent to the U.S. by other members of the psychedelic movement to get their ideas exposure.[29] TheSummer of Love of 1967 and the resultant popularization of thehippie culture to the mainstream popularized psychedelia in the minds ofpopular culture, where it remained dominant through the 1970s.[30]
The impact of psychedelic drugs on western culture in the 1960s led tosemantic drift in the use of the word "psychedelic", and it is now frequently used to describe anything with abstract decoration of multiple bright colours, similar to those seen in drug-induced hallucinations. In objection to this new meaning, and to what some[who?] considerpejorative meanings of other synonyms such as "hallucinogen" and "psychotomimetic", the term "entheogen" was proposed and is seeing increasing use. However, some[who?] consider the term "entheogen" best reserved for religious and spiritual usage, such as certain Native American churches do with the peyote sacrament, and "psychedelic" left to describe those who are using these drugs for recreation, psychotherapy, physical healing, or creative problem solving. In science,hallucinogen remains the standard term.[31]
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Advances in printing and photographic technology in the 1960s saw the traditionallithography printing techniques rapidly superseded by theoffset printing system. This and other technical and industrial innovations gave young artists access to exciting new graphic techniques and media, including photographic and mixed media collage, metallic foils, and vivid new fluorescent "DayGlo" inks. This enabled them to explore innovative new illustrative styles including highly distorted visuals, cartoons, and lurid colors and fullspectrums to evoke a sense of altered consciousness; a number of works also featured idiosyncratic and complex new fonts and lettering styles (most notably in the work of San Francisco-based poster artist Rick Griffin). A number of artists[who?] in the late 1960s and early 1970s attempted to illustrate the psychedelic experience inpaintings,drawings,illustrations, and other forms of graphic design.
Thecounterculture music scene frequently used psychedelic designs on posters during theSummer of Love, leading to a popularization of the style. The most productive and influential centre of psychedelic art in the late 1960s wasSan Francisco; a scene driven in large measure by the patronage of the popular local music venues of the day like theAvalon Ballroom andBill Graham'sFillmore West, which regularly commissioned young local artists likeRobert Crumb,Stanley Mouse,Rick Griffin and others. They produced a wealth of distinctive psychedelic promotionalposters and handbills for concerts that featured emerging psychedelic bands likeBig Brother and the Holding Company,[32]The Grateful Dead andJefferson Airplane. A number of these works are now regarded as classics of the poster genre, and original items by these artists command high prices on the collector market today.
Contemporary with the burgeoning San Francisco scene, a smaller but equally creative psychedelic art movement emerged in London, led by expatriate Australian pop artistMartin Sharp, who created multiple psychedelic posters and illustrations for the influential underground publicationOz magazine, as well as the famous album covers for theCream albumsDisraeli Gears andWheels of Fire.[33]
Other prominent London practitioners of the style included: design duoHapshash and the Coloured Coat, whose work included multiple famous posters, as well as psychedelic "makeovers" on a piano forPaul McCartney and a car for doomedGuinness heirTara Browne, and design collectiveThe Fool, who created clothes and album art for several leading UK bands includingThe Beatles, Cream, andThe Move. The Beatles loved psychedelic designs on their albums, and designer group called The Fool created psychedelic design, art, paint at the short-livedApple Boutique (1967–1968) in Baker St, London.[34]
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Blues rock singer Janis Joplin had a psychedelic car, a Porsche 356.[35] The trend also extended to motor vehicles. The earliest, and perhaps most famous of all psychedelic vehicles was the famous "Further" bus, driven byKen Kesey andThe Merry Pranksters, which was painted inside and out in 1964 with bold psychedelic designs (although these were executed in primary colours, since the DayGlo colours that soon becamede rigueur were then not widely available).[36] Another famous example isJohn Lennon's psychedelic Rolls-Royce – originally black, he had it repainted in 1967 in a vivid psychedelic gypsy caravan style, prompting bandmate George Harrison to have hisMini Cooper similarly repainted with logos and devices that reflected his burgeoning interest in Indian spirituality.[37]
The Psychedelia movement in the 1960s had a large impact on graphic design and architecture during the movement. During this time period, it was all about taking creative risks. This movement was experimental and colorful. There was a political unrest because of Black and Indigenous groups trying to get their rights. With African Americans, it was thecivil rights movement. Michael Parke-Taylor includes Native Americans in the conversation. For Indigenous or Native Americans, they "represented the perfect symbol of those marginalized and persecuted in contemporary American society."[38]
Graphic design during this era was playful and colorful. This was because of the drug known asLSD. The Hippies took over the psychedelic designs. Jeffrey Meikle understood what the Hippies wanted to create. He knew that the "Hippie artists energized American visual culture with rock concert posters, record jackets, extravagant, and underground newspapers."[39] Milton Glaser has a poster design ofBob Dylan. The poster is colorful and playful. Glaser wanted to get away from the black and white designs of posters and trade that in for a more experimental design. These designs were usually hand painted and printed. The typography was the same as the poster which was playful and colorful. Juliana Duque mentions the typography was "organic patterns, kaleidoscopic textures, and waving (nearly encrypted) lettering combined with intense colors."[40]
There were a few architecture designs that came out during this period. The graphic design elements on buses were just as colorful as the posters. They employed psychedelic elements to craft immersive environments and foster an interactive space. Luke Dickens explores the overlooked architecture in the 1960s. He mentions The Fifth Dimension as being "highly inventive, utopian “fun palace” used advanced modular technologies... and deployed psychedelic sensibilities as a novel form of disruptive politics to induce critical dispositions towards the built environment."[41] The theme of bright colors was evident in this fiber glass domed-shaped building. This building was meant to trigger psychedelic responses.[42] Similar to The Fifth Dimension, there was a geodesicdome and adymaxion car made by Buckminster Fuller. The geodesic dome was complex. Meikle explained that Fuller followed the psychedelia era by wanting to speak "to a counterculture claiming to reject American Materialism."[39]
The fashion for psychedelic drugs gave its name to the style of psychedelia, a term describing a category ofrock music known aspsychedelic rock, as well asvisual art,fashion, andculture that is associated originally with the high 1960s, hippies, and theHaight-Ashbury neighborhood ofSan Francisco,California.[43] It often used new recording techniques and effects while drawing onEastern sources such as theragas anddrones ofIndian music.
One of the first uses of the word in the music scene of this time was in the 1964 recording of "Hesitation Blues" by folk group theHoly Modal Rounders.[44] The term was introduced to rock music and popularized by the13th Floor Elevators 1966 albumThe Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators.[44] Psychedelia truly took off in 1967 with theSummer of Love and, although associated with San Francisco, the style soon spread across theUS, and worldwide.[45]
Theelectronic dance music scene is strongly linked to the consumption of psychedelic drugs, particularlyMDMA.[46] Drug usage in the EDM scene can primarily be traced to Britishacid house parties and theSecond Summer of Love, which marked the beginnings ofrave culture; these movements, however, were distinct from and mostly unrelated to 1960s psychedelia.
A psychedelic festival is a gathering that promotespsychedelic music andart in an effort to unite participants in a communalpsychedelic experience.[47] Psychedelic festivals have been described as"temporary communities reproduced via personal and collective acts of transgression... through the routine expenditure of excess energy, and through self-sacrifice in acts of abandonment involving ecstatic dancing often fueled by chemical cocktails."[47] These festivals often emphasize the ideals ofpeace, love, unity, and respect.[47] Notable psychedelic festivals include the biennialBoom Festival in Portugal,[47]Ozora Festival in Hungary, Universo Paralello in Brazil as well as Nevada'sBurning Man[48] and California'sSymbiosis Gathering in the United States.[49]
In recent years there has been a resurgence in interest in psychedelic research and a growing number of conferences now take place across the globe.[50] The psychedelic research charity Breaking Convention have hosted one of the world's largest since 2011. A biennial conference in London, UK, Breaking Convention: a multidisciplinary conference onpsychedelicconsciousness[51] is a multidisciplinary conference on psychedelic consciousness. In the USMAPS held their first Psychedelic Science conference,[52] devoted specifically to research of psychedelics in scientific and medical fields, in 2013. In Australia, Entheogenesis Australis has been hosting the world's longest ongoing conferences around psychedelics and ethnobotany since 2004.[53]
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