Psychedelic Decadence

Psychedelic Decadence
Author: Martin Christopher Jones
Publisher: Headpress
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2001
Genre: Art
ISBN:

Cruises through popular British culture of the 1960s and 1970s by way of a collection of eclecti, illustrated essays. With an emphasis on the 'throwaway' world of sex, drugs, movies, comics and rockn'roll, Glam and Gutter are explored in detail, courtesy of an occasional surprising diversion... From cliched hippies to nonconformists, through trend-crushing youth movements to pop stars in bad horror movies and prog rock, nothing is safe from the crushed velveteen grasp of Psychedelic Decadence.

Psychedelic Mysticism

Psychedelic Mysticism
Author: Morgan Shipley
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2015-11-12
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 149850910X

Concerned with scholarly, popular, and religious backdrops that understand the connection between psychedelics and mystical experiences to be devoid of moral concerns and ethical dimensions—a position supported empirically by the rise of acid fascism and psychedelic cults by the late 1960s—Psychedelic Mysticism: Transforming Consciousness, Religious Experiences, and Voluntary Peasants in Postwar America traces the development of sixties psychedelic mysticism from the deconditioned mind and perennial philosophy of Aldous Huxley, to the sacramental ethics of Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, and Ralph Metzner, to the altruistic religiosity practiced by Stephen Gaskin and The Farm. Building directly off the pioneering psychedelic writing of Huxley, these psychedelic mystics understood the height of psychedelic consciousness as an existential awareness of unitive oneness, a position that offered worldly alternatives to the maladies associated with the postwar moment (e.g., vapid consumerism and materialism, lifeless conformity, unremitting racism, heightened militarism). In opening a doorway to a common world, Morgan Shipley locates how psychedelics challenged the coherency of Western modernity by fundamentally reorienting postwar society away from neoliberal ideologies and toward a sacred understanding of reality defined by mutual coexistence and responsible interdependence. In 1960s America, psychedelics catalyzed a religious awakening defined by compassion, expressed through altruism, and actualized in projects that sought to ameliorate the conditions of the least advantaged among us. In the exact moments that historians and cultural critics often locate as signaling the death knell of the counterculture, Gaskin and The Farm emerged, not as a response to the perceived failures of the hippies, nor as an alternative to sixties politicos, but in an effort to fulfill the religious obligation to help teach the world how to live more harmoniously. Today, as we continue to confront issues of socioeconomic inequality, entrenched differences, widespread violence, and the limits of religious pluralism, Psychedelic Mysticism serves as a timely reminder of how religion in America can operate as a tool for destabilization and as a means to actively reimagine the very basis of how people relate—such a legacy can aid in our own efforts to build a more peaceful, sustainable, and compassionate world.

Summer of Love

Summer of Love
Author: Christoph Grunenberg
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Total Pages: 390
Release: 2005-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780853239291

Though more than a generation has passed since the revolutionary fervor of the Summer of Love of 1967, the 1960s in many ways seem with us still. From recurring debates over the war in Vietnam to the perpetually appealing music of the Beatles and the Rolling Stone to the concern about youth drug use, the legacy of the 1960s is ubiquitous in contemporary life. The Summer of Love brings together an impressive group of historians, artists, and cultural critics to present a rich and varied interpretation of this seminal decade and its continuing influence on politics, society, and culture. The Summer of Love, which accompanies an exhibition at Tate Liverpool, pays particular attention to the wildly creative psychedelic art of the era. Perceptive essays on psychedelic comics, graphic design and typography, light shows, and film successfully rescue psychedelic art from the fog of nostalgia and unjust critical neglect. Distinguished contributors also explore the role of 1960s fashion and architecture, and they consider anew the central influence of hallucinogenic drugs on the art of the era. Running throughout the essays are the elements of epochal change—from sexual liberation to student revolutions—that still form the backdrop of our collective consciousness of the 1960s. An incisive collection of writings on all aspects of 1960s art and culture, tempered by time and critical distance, The Summer of Love will be indispensable for those who wish they had been there—or for those who were, but can't remember it.

Headpress

Headpress
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 648
Release: 2002
Genre: Death in mass media
ISBN:

Offbeat (Revised & Updated)

Offbeat (Revised & Updated)
Author: Julian Upton
Publisher: SCB Distributors
Total Pages: 748
Release: 2022-04-07
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1909394947

For years there has been consensus about the merits of Britain’s ‘cult films’ — Peeping Tom, Witchfinder General, The Italian Job — but what of The Mark, Unearthly Stranger, The Strange Affair and The Squeeze? Revisionist critics wax lyrical over Get Carter and The Wicker Man, but what of Sitting Target, Quest for Love and The Black Panther? OFFBEAT redresses this imbalance by exploring Britain’s obscurities, curiosities and forgotten gems — from the buoyant leap in film production in the late fifties to the dying days of popular domestic cinema in the early eighties. Featuring essays, interviews and in-depth reviews, OFFBEAT provides an exhaustive, enlightening and entertaining guide through a host of neglected cinematic trends and episodes, including: • The last great British B-movies • ‘Anti-swinging sixties’ films • Sexploitation — from Yellow Teddy Bears to Emmanuelle in Soho • The British rock ‘n roll movie • CIA-funded British cartoons • Asylums in British cinema • The Children’s Film Foundation • The demise of the short as supporting feature • Val Guest, Sidney Hayers and the forgotten journeyman of British film • Swashbucklers, crime thrillers and other non-horror Hammers Now updated with more than 150 pages of new reviews and essays, featuring: • The Beatles in Colour! • The History of the AA Certificate • Ken Russell’s 1980s Films • Iris Murdoch’s A Severed Head • Curating Offbeat films in the Digital Age And much more!

Renegotiating the Body

Renegotiating the Body
Author: Kathy Battista
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2012-11-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0857735918

What makes art 'feminist art'? Although feminist artists do have a unique aesthetic, there can be no essential feminist aesthetic, argues Kathy Battista in this exciting new art history. Domesticity, the body, its traces and sexuality have become prominent themes in contemporary feminist practice but where did these preoccupations begin and how did they come to signify a particular type of art? Kathy Battista's (re-)engagement with the founding generation of female practitioners centres on 1970s London as the cultural hub from which a new art practice arose. Emphasising the importance of artists including Bobby Baker, Anne Bean, Catherine Elwes, Rose English, Alexis Hunter, Tina Keane, Hannah O'Shea, Kate Walker and Silvia Ziranek and examining works such as Mary Kelly's Post-Partum Document, Judy Clark's 1973 exhibition Issues, Carolee Schneemann's Meat Joy and Cosey Fanni Tutti's Prostitution, shown in 1976, Kathy Battista investigates some of the most controversial and provocative art from the era. This book not only deals with the 'famous' art events but includes analysis of lesser-known exhibitions and performances and explains why so much feminist art has been both marginalised in art history and grossly under-represented in institutional archives and collections.

Michael Reeves

Michael Reeves
Author: Benjamin Halligan
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2003-11-08
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780719063510

Michael Reeves died at age 25 in 1969, between the end of Swinging London and the collapse of the British film industry--an apt candidate to represent all that could have been. This critical biography claims Reeves as the great, lost auteur of British cinema and traces his conception of film back to his childhood and formative experiences. Benjamin Halligan examines Reeves' films in the context of the times, citing The Sorcerers and Witchfinder General as foreshadowing and critiquing the psychedelic and revolutionary zeitgeist. Reeves's earlier work on the fringes of the freewheeling European exploitation cinema is also covered, with particularly emphasis on his Revenge of the Blood Beast.

Staging Decadence

Staging Decadence
Author: Adam Alston
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 148
Release: 2023-09-07
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1350237051

How is decadence being staged today – as a practice, issue, pejorative, and as a site of pleasure? Where might we find it, why might we look for it, and who is decadence for? This book is the first monographic study of decadence in theatre and performance. Adam Alston makes a passionate case for the contemporary relevance of decadence in the thick of a resurgent culture war by focusing on its antithetical relationship to capitalist-led growth, progress, and intensified productivity. He argues that the qualities used to disparage the study and practice of theatre and performance are the very things we should embrace in celebrating their value – namely, their spectacular uselessness, wastefulness, outmodedness, and abundant potential for producing forms of creativity that flow away from the ends and excesses of capitalism. Alston covers an eclectic range of examples by Julia Bardsley (UK), Hasard Le Sin (Finland), jaamil olawale kosoko (USA), Toco Nikaido (Japan), Martin O'Brien (UK), Toshiki Okada (Japan), Marcel·lí Antúnez Roca (Spain), Normandy Sherwood (USA), The Uhuruverse (USA), Nia O. Witherspoon (USA), and Wunderbaum (Netherlands). Expect ruminations on monstrous scenographies, catatonic choreographies, turbo-charged freneticism, visions of the apocalypse – and what might lie in its wake.

Funhouse

Funhouse
Author: David Kerekes
Publisher:
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2002
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9781900486187

A gothic, blood curdling edition of the world's greatest journal of sex, religion and death. Incisive and cutting edge essays from the world of underground film, fanaticism, crime, sex, art, trash and sleaze. Contents include; A visit to the reclusive director of 70s seminal obscure horror movie Last house on Dead End Street, interview with Tom Robbins whose book 'Another Roadside Attraction' Elvis was reputed to be reading when he died, and Laurence O'Toole, author of 'Pornucopia' on set with gonzo pornmaker Buttman. Illustrated with 20 black and white illustrations.

The Psychedelic Gospels

The Psychedelic Gospels
Author: Jerry B. Brown
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2016-09-15
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 1620555034

Reveals evidence of visionary plants in Christianity and the life of Jesus found in medieval art and biblical scripture--hidden in plain sight for centuries • Follows the authors’ anthropological adventure discovering sacred mushroom images in European and Middle Eastern churches, including Roslyn Chapel and Chartres • Provides color photos showing how R. Gordon Wasson’s psychedelic theory of religion clearly extends to Christianity and reveals why Wasson suppressed this information due to his secret relationship with the Vatican • Examines the Bible and the Gnostic Gospels to show that visionary plants were the catalyst for Jesus’s awakening to his divinity and immortality Throughout medieval Christianity, religious works of art emerged to illustrate the teachings of the Bible for the largely illiterate population. What, then, is the significance of the psychoactive mushrooms hiding in plain sight in the artwork and icons of many European and Middle-Eastern churches? Does Christianity have a psychedelic history? Providing stunning visual evidence from their anthropological journey throughout Europe and the Middle East, including visits to Roslyn Chapel and Chartres Cathedral, authors Julie and Jerry Brown document the role of visionary plants in Christianity. They retrace the pioneering research of R. Gordon Wasson, the famous “sacred mushroom seeker,” on psychedelics in ancient Greece and India, and among the present-day reindeer herders of Siberia and the Mazatecs of Mexico. Challenging Wasson’s legacy, the authors reveal his secret relationship with the Vatican that led to Wasson’s refusal to pursue his hallucinogen theory into the hallowed halls of Christianity. Examining the Bible and the Gnostic Gospels, the authors provide scriptural support to show that sacred mushrooms were the inspiration for Jesus’ revelation of the Kingdom of Heaven and that he was initiated into these mystical practices in Egypt during the Missing Years. They contend that the Trees of Knowledge and of Immortality in Eden were sacred mushrooms. Uncovering the role played by visionary plants in the origins of Judeo-Christianity, the authors invite us to rethink what we know about the life of Jesus and to consider a controversial theory that challenges us to explore these sacred pathways to the divine.