Summer of love: art of the Psychedelic Era Vienna Kunsthalle
Janis Joplins Porsche. 356C Cabriolet, 1965 © Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt
Liquid Dreams JUAN ANTONIO ÁLVAREZ REYES There is a grave risk with all revivals, all “neos”, all glances at the past that returns: denaturing. Certainly, on the continuous Ferris wheels of fashion, for the past few years it has been the turn of the psychedelic, and as with all revivals it is hollow of content –all that matters is the form and the pose, but there is very little interest in what surrounded that movement. It is the sign of the times. In this regard, the exhibition that Christoph Gruneberg organised for the Tate Liverpool and which later travelled to Frankfurt and is now in Vienna, is a refreshing exception: a good attempt to study and contextualise the artistic effusions of the psychedelic movement. At all events it was about time to seek to relate artistic manifestations which were intermingled in their period, and to ascribe the importance that is due to countercultural movements since the 1960s. Transcending the mere revival, this exhibition is interesting both as an excellent study of the 104 · ARTECONTEXTO · REVIEWS
time and the ideas that shaped it, and for joining together on equal terms the diverse aspects that made up a style. As the curator says, psychedelia was “a powerful mode of expression of the feelings of a generation in revolt, signifying nonconformity, individuality, and freedom”. In the catalogue Grunenberg also points out that “the emergence and flower of a psychedelic style coincided with one of the most revolutionary periods of the 20th century,” while also underlining “the intimate connection amongst contemporary art; popular culture, social discontent and moral upheaval in the 1960s and early 1970s”. With these willows a basket has been woven that suits the purposes and does not forget them, building an exhibition and a catalogue that is adequate to them. Of all the artistic manifestations that are gathered together to tell this story –since at bottom it is an historical exhibition, in both senses of the term– which range from music and related posters, fashion, design, installations, experimental films, and architecture, it should be pointed out that on several occasions a conjunction of them occurs –music, film screenings, performance, and design are mixed together. It suffices to recall some of the “happenings” involving Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground, such as the one filmed by Ronald Nameth and called Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966) or those other experiences –in which the use and experimentation with certain drugs, particularly LSD, was essential– which found the night time to be the right time for their production. Accordingly, nocturnal platforms like the Electric Circus in New York or the UFO Club in London, turned these nightspots into psychedelic spaces. These were the movement’s “temples”, and not the museums or showrooms, which today can only present the vestiges of the movement, above all of that sort of “total art” that took place in this and other clubs and discothèques. In any case it isn’t hard, going out at night, to find the traces and signs that the movement left behind, not only in the décor of many places, but in the use of projections of moving images or slides. It is in the film experiences and experiments when this exhibition most brightly shines, as well as in its reconstruction of some sensorial installations. It is reminiscent of two great exhibitions addressing relations between music and light, Songs & Lumières (Pompidou) and Visual Music (Hirshhorn/Moca), the so-called “expanded cinema” by Gene Youngblood finds in these years and these spaces of the night some of the best and most experimental moments of their history. “Liquid Dreams” is how Chrissie Iles describes these projected images.