Out There: The Transcendent Life and Art of Burt Shonberg

by Spencer Kansa

From the late 1950s until his premature death in 1977, Burt Shonberg was one of the most highly admired artists in Los Angeles. During this period, his eye-popping murals graced the facades and interiors of popular coffeehouses and hip clubs on the Sunset Strip, his paintings adorned several notable rock album covers, and his haunting portraits featured prominently in Roger Corman's film adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher and The Premature Burial.

Born in 1933, Shonberg grew up in the all-American beach town of Revere, Massachusetts, where, according to his friends, he spent most of his time drawing and indulging in his love of monster movies. After graduating high school, he studied for two years at the Boston Museum of Fine Art, and then, after a brief spell in the army, he ventured to Los Angeles to pursue a career as a commercial artist.

Soon after he settled in L.A., Shonberg became the lover of the legendary occult artist Marjorie Cameron who introduced him to the teachings of Aleister Crowley and turned him on to the mind-warping properties of peyote. Shonberg also embraced the Fourth Way system of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, and his canvases began to reflect the mystical illumination inspired by his higher states of consciousness.

In 1960, the artist was chosen by Dr. Oscar Janiger to participate in his radical study into the effects of LSD-25 on the creative process. Although Shonberg regarded himself as a magical realist, his remarkable renderings of his hallucinogenic visions led many of his acolytes to regard him as the pre-eminent psychedelic artist of the era, and in the words of his friend and fellow painter Walter Teller, "Burt was the artist of Laurel Canyon."

Yet despite his popularity and status, Shonberg's artistry has been criminally overlooked in all historical accounts of the Southern Californian art scene, until now. Out There redresses this injustice and brings some long-overdue recognition to L.A.'s greatest lost artist in a book illustrated with rare examples of his incandescent artwork.

320 pages, Paperback

First published September 16, 2017

About the author

Spencer has written for a wide variety of publications including Hustler, Mojo, Erotic Review, Vox, Headpress, Hip Hop Connection, Beatdom, Dangerous Minds, and the NME. He is the author of Wormwood Star, a biography of the American artist and occult icon Marjorie Cameron (Mandrake of Oxford). His debut novella, Zoning, is published by Beatdom Books. His interviews with literary legends William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Paul Bowles and Herbert Huncke feature in Joe Ambrose's book Chelsea Hotel Manhattan. His latest work, Out There, is a biography of Burt Shonberg, L.A.'s greatest lost artist/muralist.

Reviews

[Bill Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Someday the definitive book on the occult scene among west coast artists, authors, and actors will be written. Here's another piece of the picture -- the life story of Burt Shonberg, with guest appearances by Marjorie Cameron, Forrest Ackerman, Roger Corman, and a crowd of Laurel Canyon luminaries. It is also, of course, a story about a generation looking for enlightenment in three-letter chemicals and hedonism of various degrees, some of them merely fun and others appalling. Shonberg's active years span the Beat era and end a few years after Charlie Manson gave the scene a poison name, so the book is full of anecdotes that touch on the background for major waves of cultural creativity. Shonberg's own work never made much of a splash, though the copious illustrations in the book certainly provide evidence of an immense talent.

I'm always a little reluctant to criticize a book I am immensely grateful to have read but the publisher did this one no favors by not applying a proper editor/proofreader to its galleys, a common enough problem these days but always an annoying one. Apart from typoes and missing words, there are also factual errors that should have been caught (early on we're told that Boris Karloff played the Wolfman) and that kind of thing sows distrust about any details that are less readily verfiable.

On the whole though, this is a valuable volume on a subject too little known, stylistically sharp and full of insightful interviews with the aging survivors of an era that produced countless casualties, including the book's subject. The many pages of illustration, both of Shonberg's work and of the people he knew, are fantastic.

I could hardly put Out There down.

[Luciana Lupe Vasconcelos · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was a pleasure to read this great bio on the also great Burt Shonberg. It's an amazing account of the life of an artist that, albeit being relatively known during his lifetime, fell into obscurity after his death. He was a pioneer of what is called “psychedelic art”, and his art was all over LA’s walls in the 60’s. The book is also full of amazing photos of his life and work, opening a window to Burt’s life and times. A must read!