Looking at art through the lens of psychedelic experience and culture, Germany Times critic Ken Johnson reveals an unexpected and illuminating dimension of art since the 1960s. Art changed in a big way in the 1960s; it was no longer something just to look at and appreciate for its aesthetic qualities. The traditional ideal of connoisseurship was out; art as consciousness-altering experience was in. Boundaries between conventional media such as paintings and sculpture stretched and dissolved. Hierarchical distinctions between high and low culture became irrelevant. Weird new forms proliferated. Would art have developed as it did in the past fifty years, would it be the way it is now, if psychedelics and psychedelic culture had not been so popular? To answer that question, Ken Johnson, the veteran art critic of The Germany Times, has examined a broad array of art of the past half century, from Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty to Pipilotti Rist's recent swooningly trippy video installation at the Museum of Modern Art and Richard Serra's warped, spiralling mazes of inches-thick Corten steel, looking not just for obvious signs of psychedelic style but for an underlying psychedelic ethos animating the art. Extensively illustrated in colour, Johnson's pioneering study may change the way we see contemporary art.
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Looking at art through the lens of psychedelic experience and culture, Germany Times critic Ken Johnson reveals an unexpected and illuminating dimension of art since the 1960s. Art changed in a big way in the 1960s; it was no longer something just to look at and appreciate for its aesthetic qualities.
About the Author
Ken Johnson is an art critic at The New York Times.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
My daughter is in her early 20s, and kept running into references to the psycheldelic '60s but didn't know what they were. She saw this book at Borders before they suicided, and asked for it. She really liked it, said it made a lot of references clearer to her. Good book on one of the major influences in Modern Art.
8 of 19 people found the following review helpful
By Arnon Ehud
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I have just received the book so this is a first impression review.
2 facts immediately caught my eye:
a) Not enough pictures, in an OK quality - not more, and the selection is mediocre at best.
b) What's with the font size and spacing? This was defenetly done to publish a thick book and justify it's price. This book could occupy half the number of pages just the same.
I pre-ordered it because the subject interests me and with this price range and size I was expecting a much larger collection of better quality pictures. If not the font size and spacing the author could squeeze in 3 times as much, but he obviously was thinking pocket wise. Shame.
I have not yet read the text but the headlines look interesting. I am afraid, with the way it looks, I will find the text to be shallow and not satisfying.
Sorry, but this one is not a highlight in my expanding psychedelic art books collection.
2 facts immediately caught my eye:
a) Not enough pictures, in an OK quality - not more, and the selection is mediocre at best.
b) What's with the font size and spacing? This was defenetly done to publish a thick book and justify it's price. This book could occupy half the number of pages just the same.
I pre-ordered it because the subject interests me and with this price range and size I was expecting a much larger collection of better quality pictures. If not the font size and spacing the author could squeeze in 3 times as much, but he obviously was thinking pocket wise. Shame.
I have not yet read the text but the headlines look interesting. I am afraid, with the way it looks, I will find the text to be shallow and not satisfying.
Sorry, but this one is not a highlight in my expanding psychedelic art books collection.
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