Psychedelic Art

Psychedelic art is any kind of artwork that is visually inspired by psychedelic experiences induced by drugs. The word psychedelic basically means the mind making something, like hallucinating. These days people refer to it as 'tripping'. Alton Kelley is an American artist who creates 60s psychedelic rock posters. Rick Griffin is well known for his psychedelic 60s poster illustrations, but he is also well known for doing cover art. Because he was born near Palos Verdes, his work is greatly influenced by the surfing culture of southern California. Stanley Mouse is best known for his 60s psychedelic rock concert poster art. All three of these artists have worked on covers for the band Grateful Dead. 'Kelley and Mouse combined sinous Art Nouveau lettering and outre images plucked from sources near and far to create the visual equivalent of an acid trip.'

(http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/04/arts/design/04kelley.html)

The cover for Tanyet by The Ceyleib People was designed by Rick Griffin. It is unmistakably psychedelic, not only is is bright and colourful but it includes alien vegetation and a dark castle on a hill in a bubble like some unreachable, unreal place. The psychedelic artwork fits well with the bluesy rock of the music, with its use of sitars and flutes and violins.

The Grateful Dead was a rock band formed from 1965 to 1995. I can't think of any other style of art that would suit their music style. They are known for their unique sound which merges elements of rock, folk, bluegrass (a sub-genre of country music), blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock (a sub-genre of rock, e.g Pink Floyd). This artwork for Grateful Dead is iconic for psychedelic art, it has a skull and crossed bones, a blazing sun, bold red bird wings, mushrooms, and all the activity going on underneath the trees in the earth. It is very bright and colourful, and overloaded with imagery. This one is by Rick Griffin who the band met backstage at a concert and liked his style so gave him total artistic freedom in designing their cover. The text is intricate and 3D which I have noticed on alot of psychedelic artwork and the fact that this text is in darker colours created a nice visual contrast, if the text was bright aswell it would probably be an eye-sore.

I actually stumbled upon psychedelic art and wouldn't have thought to look at it for my blog but I'm glad I did because I have come to really like it, it is unlike anything else, except for the Art Nouveau references but I like Art Nouveau aswell. I think that psychedelic art is quite freeing because the point is that it is 'trippy' and so you can pretty much create anything. I also like the brave use of colour, psychedelic art is a place where you can go crazy (but obviously don't go overboard into tacky).