1955 Psychology Experiment Sees What Happens When You Ask an Artist to Paint Under the Influence of LSD

in Science | April 22nd, 2014


A few months ago, we fea­tured the increas­ing­ly abstract por­traits drawn by an artist after peri­od­ic dos­es of LSD. It hap­pened in the late 1950s, a time when you might well imag­ine such an activ­i­ty going down in, say, a bohemi­an quar­ter of New York, but also a time when hal­lu­cino­genic drugs rode a wave of pop­u­lar­i­ty among legit­i­mate sci­en­tists. Those osten­si­bly straight-laced researchers (some­times fund­ed by CIA mon­ey) had a fas­ci­na­tion not with the tak­ing of hal­lu­cino­genic drugs — not nec­es­sar­i­ly, any­way — but with what, exact­ly, these hal­lu­cino­genic drugs did to those who do take them. Par­tic­u­lar­ly artists draw­ing por­traits. Those por­traits drawn on LSD came out under the close watch of Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Irvine psy­chi­a­trist Oscar Janiger. Above, you can watch the fruit of anoth­er, much more ver­bal 1950s exper­i­ment con­duct­ed just down the coast by the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Nicholas A. Ber­cel, M.D.: “Schiz­o­phrenic Mod­el Psy­chosis Induced by LSD 25.”

Here we also have an artist exam­ined: this time, a Los Ange­les painter named Bill. As Bill floats through his altered state, Ber­cel asks him to describe, in as rig­or­ous detail as pos­si­ble, his per­cep­tions of objects in the room, of items of food and drink brought in, and of their inter­ac­tions them­selves. This 24-minute film of the four-hour process, punc­tu­at­ed by elec­troen­cephalo­graph­ic scans, comes as a pro­duc­tion of San­doz, the Swiss phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny who orig­i­nal­ly iso­lat­ed LSD and who appar­ent­ly had an inter­est in bring­ing a form of it to mar­ket. (One pro­posed phar­ma­co­log­i­cal des­ig­na­tion: “Phan­tastium.”) Though that did­n’t hap­pen, the Hun­gar­i­an-born Ber­cel went on through­out his long career to con­duct more research of the kind that ulti­mate­ly earned him a lega­cy as a pio­neer in neu­ro­phys­i­ol­o­gy. He also, when not in the lab, wrote over a dozen nov­els and film treat­ments. Clear­ly he had an impres­sive cre­ative streak, whether or not he ever per­son­al­ly had his doors of per­cep­tion opened by the sub­stances his sub­jects like Bill so enjoyed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Artist Draws Nine Por­traits on LSD Dur­ing 1950s Research Exper­i­ment

Ken Kesey’s First LSD Trip Ani­mat­ed

Beyond Tim­o­thy Leary: 2002 Film Revis­its His­to­ry of LSD

Aldous Huxley’s Most Beau­ti­ful, LSD-Assist­ed Death: A Let­ter from His Wid­ow

Watch The Bicy­cle Trip: An Ani­ma­tion of The World’s First LSD Trip in 1943

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Bob Dylan Plays First Live Performance of “Hurricane,” His Song Defending Rubin “Hurricane” Carter (RIP) in 1975

in Music | April 21st, 2014

This week­end, Rubin “Hur­ri­cane” Carter passed away. He was 76. An Amer­i­can mid­dleweight box­er, Carter was tried and con­vict­ed twice (once 1967, again in 1976) for homi­cides that took place in Pater­son, New Jer­sey in 1966 — despite the fact that there were no fin­ger prints or eye­wit­ness­es con­nect­ing him to the crime. (Both con­vic­tions were lat­er over­turned when courts found that the tri­als were taint­ed by pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct.) Before the sec­ond tri­al, Bob Dylan met with Carter in prison and then wrote “Hur­ri­cane,” a protest song that reached #33 on the Bill­board chart. Accord­ing to Jam­base, Dylan brought a trio to Chicago’s WTTW Stu­dios for a three-song per­for­mance where they played “Hur­ri­cane” on Sep­tem­ber 10, 1975. He’s backed by Scar­let Rivera on vio­lin, Rob Ston­er on bass, and Howie Wyeth on drums. It was appar­ent­ly Dylan’s first live per­for­mance of the eight minute song.

PS Sor­ry for the ad that plays before the video. We have no con­trol over that.

via Expect­ing Rain

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bob Dylan Reads From T.S. Eliot’s Great Mod­ernist Poem The Waste Land

Bob Dylan and George Har­ri­son Play Ten­nis, 1969

Bob Dylan and Van Mor­ri­son Sing Togeth­er in Athens, on His­toric Hill Over­look­ing the Acrop­o­lis

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Orson Welles Tells Some Damn Good Stories in the Orson Welles’ Sketch Book (1955)

in Film, Television | April 21st, 2014

On the first episode of Orson Welles’ Sketch Book, the man who made Cit­i­zen Kane remem­bers an anx­i­ety-induc­ing evening ear­ly in his career: hav­ing some­how already gained a rep­u­ta­tion as an enter­tain­ing after-din­ner speak­er, he found him­self stand­ing before a room­ful of what seemed like every movie star in the flesh that he’d ever seen on the screen. Des­per­ate to impress all these celebri­ties who had so impressed him, he pulled out the only amus­ing sto­ry in his reper­toire, only to real­ize halfway through the telling that he could­n’t remem­ber how it end­ed. Luck­i­ly, one of Cal­i­for­ni­a’s earth­quakes struck just before he reached that for­got­ten end­ing, send­ing the whole Hol­ly­wood crowd out the door and let­ting him off the racon­teur hook. By the time he tells the next tale, of his longer-ago, more stress­ful and much more for­ma­tive debut onstage in front of a decid­ed­ly unco­op­er­a­tive Dublin audi­ence, you’ll won­der why he could­n’t han­dle the after-din­ner speak­ing; if any­one has a nat­ur­al sto­ry­teller’s instinct, he does.

The BBC must have thought so, in any case, when they put togeth­er this series of tele­vi­sion com­men­taries from Welles, none of which need more than his then slight­ly unfa­mil­iar face (with­out, he under­scores, the usu­al false nose he wears for roles), his unmis­tak­able voice, and his illus­tra­tions — tak­en, lit­er­al­ly, from his sketch­book. In these six fif­teen-minute broad­casts, which orig­i­nal­ly aired in 1955, Welles talks about not just the inaus­pi­cious begin­nings of his illus­tri­ous work­ing life but his expe­ri­ences with the crit­ics, the police, John Bar­ry­more and Har­ry Hou­di­ni, the infa­mous radio pro­duc­tion of War of the Worlds (which you can hear in our post for its 75th anniver­sary), and bull­fight­ing (see also our post on his friend­ship with Ernest Hem­ing­way). Though inter­est­ing in and of them­selves, he uses these sub­jects to tie togeth­er a vari­ety of rec­ol­lec­tions and obser­va­tions from his life and career: on the fin­er points of pro­duc­ing Shake­speare with voodoo witch-doc­tors, on media-induced gulli­bil­i­ty, on the inva­sion of pri­va­cy, on the art of line prompt­ing. Not set­tling for sta­tus as a cre­ative genius in film, the­ater, and radio, it seems Welles also laid down the exam­ple for a form that would­n’t actu­al­ly arrive for anoth­er fifty years: vlog­ging.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Orson Welles Remem­bers his Stormy Friend­ship with Ernest Hem­ing­way

Orson Welles Explains Why Igno­rance Was His Major “Gift” to Cit­i­zen Kane

Orson Welles’ Last Inter­view and Final Moments Cap­tured on Film

Revis­it Orson Welles’ Icon­ic ‘War of the Worlds’ Broad­cast That Aired 75 Years Ago Today

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Drawings of Jean-Paul Sartre

in Art, Letters, Philosophy | April 21st, 2014

SartreDrawings1

We’ve estab­lished some­thing of a tra­di­tion here of fea­tur­ing draw­ings by famous authors. It seems, unsur­pris­ing­ly, that skill with the pen often goes hand-in-glove with a keen visu­al sense, though admit­ted­ly some writ­ers are more tal­ent­ed drafts­men than oth­ers. William Faulkn­er, for exam­ple, cre­at­ed some very fine pen-and-ink illus­tra­tions for his col­lege news­pa­per dur­ing his brief time at Ole Miss. Franz Kafka’s expres­sion­is­tic sketch­es are quite strik­ing, despite his anguished protes­ta­tions to the con­trary. And Jorge Luis Borges’ doo­dles are as quirky and play­ful as the author him­self. Today we bring you the sketch­es of that great French exis­ten­tial­ist philoso­pher, nov­el­ist, and play­wright Jean-Paul Sartre—a col­lec­tion of six rough, child­like car­i­ca­tures that are, shall we say, rather less than accom­plished. It’s cer­tain­ly for the best—as the cliché goes—that Sartre nev­er quit his day job for an art career.

SartreDrawings2

But there is a cer­tain wicked charm in Sartre’s visu­al satires of human moral fail­ings, which he calls a “series de ‘douze vices sans allusion’”—roughly, “a series of twelve vices with­out ref­er­ence.” Either Sartre only com­plet­ed half the series, or—more likely—half have been lost, since the author assures the recip­i­ent of his hand­i­work, a Made­moi­selle Suzanne Guille, that he presents to her a “série com­plete.” Who was Suzanne Guille? Your guess is as good as mine. Yale’s Bei­necke Rare Book & Man­u­script Library, which hous­es these sketch­es, gives us no indi­ca­tion. Per­haps she was a rel­a­tive, per­haps the spouse, of Pierre Guille, Simon de Beauvoir’s last lover? Giv­en the many com­pli­cat­ed liaisons pur­sued by both Sartre and his part­ner, the pos­si­bil­i­ties are indeed intrigu­ing. As for the draw­ings? Their sub­jects hold more inter­est than their exe­cu­tion, pro­vid­ing us with keys to Sartre’s moral uni­verse.

SartreDrawings3

The first car­i­ca­ture, at the top, is titled “Le Con­tent­ment de soi”—“Self-Satisfaction”—and the character’s pompous expres­sion says as much. Below it, the curi­ous lit­tle fel­low with the curlicue nose is called “L’Esprit Critique”—“The Spir­it of Crit­i­cism.” And above we have “Le respect de la con­signe et de la jurée”—“Keeping a Sworn Oath.” You can see the remain­ing three draw­ings, and read Sartre’s let­ter (in French, of course) to Made­moi­selle Guille in pdf form here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Philosophy’s Pow­er Cou­ple, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beau­voir, Fea­tured in 1967 TV Inter­view

James Joyce, With His Eye­sight Fail­ing, Draws a Sketch of Leopold Bloom (1926)

Two Child­hood Draw­ings from Poet E.E. Cum­mings Show the Young Artist’s Play­ful Seri­ous­ness

The Art of Sylvia Plath: Revis­it Her Sketch­es, Self-Por­traits, Draw­ings & Illus­trat­ed Let­ters

Wal­ter Kaufmann’s Clas­sic Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre (1960)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Origins of Michael Jackson’s Moonwalk: Vintage Footage of Cab Calloway, Sammy Davis Jr., Fred Astaire & More

in Dance, Video - Arts & Culture | April 21st, 2014

Michael Jack­son took one giant leap for pop his­to­ry on March 25, 1983 when he gave an ador­ing pub­lic their first taste of his sig­na­ture moon­walk in hon­or of Motown Records’ 25th birth­day. (See below)

Nov­el­ty-wise, it was­n’t quite a Neil Arm­strong moment. Like many artists, Jack­son had many prece­dents from which he could and did draw. He can be cred­it­ed with bring­ing a cer­tain atti­tude to the pro­ceed­ings. The expert prac­ti­tion­ers in the video above are more ebul­lient, tap­ping, slid­ing and pro­to-moon­walk­ing them­selves into a state of rap­ture that feeds off the audi­ence’s plea­sure.

The line-up includes artists lucky enough to have left last­ing foot­prints—Cab Cal­loway, Sam­my Davis Jr., Fred Astaire, as well as those we’d do well to redis­cov­er: Rub­ber­neck Holmes, Earl “Snake­hips” Tuck­er, Buck and Bub­bles.…

Lack­ing the Inter­net, how­ev­er, it does seem unlike­ly that Jack­son would’ve spent much time por­ing over the foot­work of these mas­ters. (He may have tak­en a sar­to­r­i­al cue from their socks.)

Instead, he invest­ed a lot of time break­ing down the street moves, what he referred to in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy as “a ‘pop­ping’ type of thing that black kids had cre­at­ed danc­ing on the street cor­ners in the ghet­to.”

Jack­son’s sis­ter, LaToya, iden­ti­fied for­mer Soul Train and Sol­id Gold dancer Jef­frey Daniel, below, as her broth­er’s pri­ma­ry tutor in this endeav­or. (He went on to co-chore­o­graph Jack­son’s videos for “Bad” and “Smooth Crim­i­nal”.) As to the sto­ry behind his moon­walk, or back­slide as he called it before Jack­son’s ver­sion oblit­er­at­ed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of any oth­er name, Daniel gave props to the same kids Jack­son did.

For those of you who men­tioned it on Twit­ter and in our com­ments, we’ve added Char­lie Chap­lin’s scene in Mod­ern Times.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Keep­ing Jacko in Per­spec­tive

James Brown Gives You Danc­ing Lessons: From The Funky Chick­en to The Booga­loo

Yoko Ono, Age 80, Still Has Moves, Dances with The Beast­ie Boys, Ira Glass, Rober­ta Flack & Friends

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of sev­en books, and cre­ator of the award win­ning East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Sir Patrick Stewart & Sir Ian McKellen Play The Newlywed Game

in Comedy, Random | April 21st, 2014

I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that this is the first time two knight­ed cul­tur­al fig­ures have played The New­ly­wed Game — a ver­sion of that wince (and nos­tal­gia) ‑induc­ing game show that ran from the 1960s through the 1990s. Although Stew­art and McK­ellen aren’t mar­ried, they know each oth­er plen­ty well. They’ve worked togeth­er on stage (in a pro­duc­tion of Wait­ing for Godot) and in film (they’ll be appear­ing togeth­er in an upcom­ing X‑Men movie.) And suf­fice it to say, they’ve formed a tight friend­ship. When Stew­art mar­ried Sun­ny Ozell last year, McK­ellen offi­ci­at­ed at the wed­ding cer­e­mo­ny.

This lit­tle bit took place at a Buz­zFeed Brews event back in Feb­ru­ary. You can watch their full 48 minute appear­ance here. Also find the two in a deep­er con­ver­sa­tion record­ed at the Screen Actors Guild Foun­da­tion just last month.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sir Patrick Stew­art Demon­strates How Cows Moo in Dif­fer­ent Eng­lish Accents

Sir Ian McK­ellen Reads Man­u­al for Chang­ing Tires in Dra­mat­ic Voice

Patrick Stew­art Talks Can­did­ly About Domes­tic Vio­lence in a Poignant Q&A Ses­sion at Comic­palooza

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Painter Paul Gauguin Plays the Harmonium with No Pants or Shoes (Circa 1895)

in Art, Photography | April 20th, 2014

gauguin plays

What do we have here? Painter Paul Gau­guin play­ing a har­mo­ni­um at the Paris stu­dio of Alphonse Mucha, a Czech Art Nou­veau painter, in or around 1895. How this came about — how Gau­guin decid­ed to strip off his pants and shoes and start play­ing that pump organ — we’ll prob­a­bly nev­er know. But we’re cer­tain­ly glad that this light moment was saved for pos­ter­i­ty.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via @SteveSilberman

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Icon­ic Artists at Work: Rare Videos of Picas­so, Matisse, Kandin­sky, Renoir, Mon­et, Pol­lock & More

Down­load 35,000 Works of Art from the Nation­al Gallery, Includ­ing Mas­ter­pieces by Van Gogh, Gau­guin, Rem­brandt & More

The Post­cards That Picas­so Illus­trat­ed and Sent to Jean Cocteau, Apol­li­naire & Gertrude Stein

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Kurt Vonnegut Urges Young People to Make Art and “Make Your Soul Grow”

in Creativity, K-12, Letters, Literature | April 19th, 2014

Art not only saves lives, it casts rip­ples, as Kurt Von­negut sure­ly knew when he replied—at length—to five New York City high school stu­dents who’d con­tact­ed him as part of a 2006 Eng­lish assign­ment.  (The iden­ti­ties of the oth­er authors select­ed for this hon­or are lost to time, but not one had the cour­tesy to respond except Von­negut.)

Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lock­wood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Bat­ten, Mau­r­er and Con­gius­ta:

I thank you for your friend­ly let­ters. You sure know how to cheer up a real­ly old geezer (84) in his sun­set years. I don’t make pub­lic appear­ances any more because I now resem­ble noth­ing so much as an igua­na.

What I had to say to you, more­over, would not take long, to wit: Prac­tice any art, music, singing, danc­ing, act­ing, draw­ing, paint­ing, sculpt­ing, poet­ry, fic­tion, essays, reportage, no mat­ter how well or bad­ly, not to get mon­ey and fame, but to expe­ri­ence becom­ing, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

Seri­ous­ly! I mean start­ing right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a fun­ny or nice pic­ture of Ms. Lock­wood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the show­er and on and on. Make a face in your mashed pota­toes. Pre­tend you’re Count Drac­u­la.

Here’s an assign­ment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lock­wood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about any­thing, but rhymed. No fair ten­nis with­out a net. Make it as good as you pos­si­bly can. But don’t tell any­body what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to any­body, not even your girl­friend or par­ents or what­ev­er, or Ms. Lock­wood. OK?

Tear it up into tee­ny-wee­ny pieces, and dis­card them into wide­ly sep­a­rat­ed trash recep­ti­cals [sic]. You will find that you have already been glo­ri­ous­ly reward­ed for your poem. You have expe­ri­enced becom­ing, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

God bless you all!

Kurt Von­negut

Von­negut’s kind wish­es and Yoko Ono-esque prompt have been wide­ly dis­sem­i­nat­ed on the Inter­net, which is no doubt where stu­dents at Hove Park School in Brighton, East Sus­sex caught the scent. Work­ing with a pro­fes­sion­al pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny that spe­cial­izes in nar­ra­tive-dri­ven work, they lit­er­al­ized  the assign­ment in the video above, and while I might have pre­ferred a sneak peek at the poems and draw­ings such a task might yield, pre-shred­ding, I loved how they acknowl­edged that not every­one heeds the call. (The cast­ing of that one could have gone either way…wouldn’t be sur­prised if you told me that that boy has a punk band that would’ve ripped Von­negut’s ears off.)

via Kate Rix

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Von­negut Dia­grams the Shape of All Sto­ries in a Master’s The­sis Reject­ed by U. Chica­go

“Wear Sun­screen”: The Sto­ry Behind the Com­mence­ment Speech That Kurt Von­negut Nev­er Gave

Kurt Vonnegut’s Eight Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry

Kurt Von­negut: Where Do I Get My Ideas From? My Dis­gust with Civ­i­liza­tion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is spend­ing tonight’s Night of Von­negut in Los Ange­les rather than her home­town of Indi­anapo­lis. So it goes. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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