Exhibitions: Upcoming

Fred Tomaselli, Ripple Trees, 1994, assorted drugs, hemp leaves, saccharin, acrylic, resin on wood panel, 48 x 48, Collection of Peter Norton

Psychedelic: Optical and Visionary Art since the 1960s

This exhibition and accompanying catalog will document one of the first significant trends of the 21st century, that is, the prevalence of a psychedelic aesthetic sensibility in contemporary art, characterized most often by extreme color and kaleidoscopic space. 

This tendency is evidenced in recent art in several mediums, including painting, sculpture, and new media.  Psychedelic: Optical and Visionary Art since the 1960s will look at this current phenomenon within an historical context as well as in relation to recent social, political, and cultural events.

Although the term ‘psychedelic’ was coined by the psychiatrist Humphry Osmond in 1957 to refer to hallucinatory experiences produced by drugs used in psychotherapeutic practices, it’s meaning has evolved over the years to include an aesthetic sensibility that filtered through pop culture in the forms of lava lamps, light shows, and posters and record album covers of the late 1960s. 

This sensibility was already germinating in the fine arts prior to the psychedelic era, in the work of Op artists who were exploring perceptual issues revolving around composition, spatial structure, and optical effects of color interaction.   Today, a psychedelic aesthetic sensibility has been widely embraced by a younger generation of artists.

The exhibition in curated by David S. Rubin, The Brown Foundation of Contemporary Art, and features the work of 25 artists:  Albert Alvarez, Richard Anuszkiewicz, Jeremy Blake, Richie Budd, George Cisneros, James Cobb, Jack Goldstein, Alex Grey, Al Held, Mark Hogensen, Constance Lowe, Erik Parker, Lari Pittman, Ray Rapp, Deborah Remington, Susie Rosmarin, Alex  Rubio, Sterling Ruby, Frank Stella, Philip Taaffe, Fred Tomaselli, Victor Vasarely, Michael Velliquette, and Robert Williams. 

The exhibition is accompanied by a 140-page catalog with essays by David S. Rubin, Robert C. Morgan, and Daniel Pinchbeck. 

The catalog is co-published by the San Antonio Museum of Art and MIT Press.  As a complement to the exhibition, the catalog will be broader in scope and include reproductions of the work of the artists in the exhibition as well as 50 additional artists.