Are You Experienced?: How Psychedelic Consciousness Transfored Modern Art

by Ken Johnson (art critic)

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.

Genres: Art

232 pages, Hardcover

First published May 20, 2011

About the author

Ken Johnson (born 1953 in Montclair, New Jersey) is an American art critic who lives in New York. Johnson is a writer for the arts pages of The New York Times, where he covers gallery and museum exhibits.

Johnson attended Brown University and State University of New York at Albany, earning a degree in art from the former in 1976 and a master's degree in studio art, with a concentration in painting, from the latter in 1977. In his journalism career he has written on contemporary art for several art magazines, newspapers and publications. He was the art critic for the Boston Globe from 2006-2007.[1]

He is also an educator, having taught courses in painting, drawing, electronic arts, art history, and art criticism at various universities in upstate New York. He teaches a writing seminar in the School of Visual Arts in art criticism and writing in New York.[2]

In June 2011, his book "Are You Experienced? How psychedelic consciousness transformed modern art" was published.

Reviews

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

We just bought it today, but Ken Johnson is a good writer in the Art World, can't wait to read it.

[Dora · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though getting to this book was a difficult task, it was worth it.

I can't say the book is extensive or that it goes into great depth. But it does cover a lot of ground and goes into various aspects of psychedelic art, looking at it from various angles. I'd say it's a great starting point (at least it is for me) and provides lots of ides and references for anyone who wants to research this topic deeper.