An art style that flourished in the late 1960s, influenced by the craze for hallucinatory drugs, especially LSD. Typical designs feature abstract swirls of high-key colour, sometimes accompanied by calligraphy in a curvilinear style derived from Art Nouveau.
Psychedelic art refers to art that is inspired by the psychedelic experience induced by drugs such as LSD, Mescaline, and Psilocybin. However, in common parlance "Psychedelic Art" refers above all to the art movement of the 1960's counterculture. Psychedelic visual arts were a counterpart to psychedelic rock music. Concert posters, Album covers, lightshows, murals, comic books, underground newspapers and more reflected not only the kaleidoscopically swirling patterns of LSD hallucinations, but also revolutionary political, social and spiritual sentiments inspired by insights derived from these psychedelic states of consciousness.
Leading proponents of the Psychedelic Art movement were San Francisco poster artists such as: Rick Griffin, Victor Moscoso, Stanley Mouse & Their Psychedelic Rock concert posters were inspired by Art Nouveau, Victoriana, Dada, and Pop Art. Richly saturated colors in glaring contrast, elaborately ornate lettering, strongly symmetrical composition, collage elements, and bizarre iconography are all hallmarks of the San Francisco psychedelic poster art style. Their work was immediately influential to album cover art, and indeed all of the aforementioned artists also created album covers.
Yet psychedelic album cover art was more international: Majorca based painter Mati Klarwein created psychedelic masterpieces for Miles Davis' Jazz-Rock fusion albums, and also for Carlos Santana Latin Rock.
Psychedelic light-shows were a new art-form developed for rock concerts. This was mixed with slideshows and film loops to create an improvisational motion picture art form to give visual representation to the improvisational jams of the rock bands and create a completely "trippy" atmosphere for the audience.
Out of the psychedelic counterculture also arose a new genre of comic books: "Underground Comix".
Psychedelic art was also applied to the LSD itself. LSD began to be put on blotter paper in the early 1970's and this gave rise to a specialized art form of decorating the blotter paper. Mark McCloud is a recognized authority on the history of LSD blotter art.
The fact that LSD blotter art kept evolving over decades shows that the Psychedelic Art movement did not end with the '60's, and if considered more deeply it did not begin in that decade either. It was part of the youth rebellion of the 1960's to openly use drugs, but the psychedelic drugs were also seen in a different light from more traditional inebriants such as opiates, cocaine and alcohol. These aspects drew artists and intellectuals to experiment with LSD and other psychedelic drugs. The artist's almost unanimously reported LSD to be an enhancement to their creativity.
Computer Arts have allowed for an even greater and more profuse expression of psychedelic vision. Fractal generating software gives an accurate depiction of psychedelic hallucinatory patterns, but even more importantly 2D and 3D graphics software allow for unparalleled freedom of image manipulation.
The Rave movement of the 1990's was a psychedelic renaissance fueled by the advent of newly available digital technologies. The rave movement developed a new graphic art style partially influenced by 1960's psychedelic poster art, but also strongly influenced by graffiti art, and by 1970's advertising art, yet clearly defined by what computer graphics software and home computers had to offer at the time of creation. Development of new psychedelics such as "2CB" and related compounds (developed primarily by chemist Alexander Shulgin are truly psychedelic, and these novel psychedelics are fertile ground for artistic exploration since many of the new psychedelics possess their own unique properties that will affect the artist's vision accordingly.
Perhaps the future of psychedelic art will be defined by those artist's who have practiced it most purely. That is to say by those artist's who have sought to record the visions derived from the psychedelic drug experience into works of art. Even as fashions have changed, and art and culture movements have come and gone certain artists have steadfastly devoted themselves to psychedelia. These artists have developed unique and distinct styles that while containing elements that are obviously "psychedelic", are clearly artistic expression that transcend simple categorization. While it is not necessary to use psychedelics to arrive at such a stage of artistic development, serious psychedelic artists are demonstrating that there is tangible technique to obtaining visions, and that technique is the creative use of psychedelic drugs.
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