Psychedelic Art
And the Greening of the America
About the Cosmic Energy Wave that hit the world
in the late 1960s and early 1970s
And the Youth Revolution that followed
It was not subtle, it was really a tsunami that swept thru here.
The energy was intense and almost violent and freeing.
And so was the art that followed.
The music, the posters, the paintings, the poems. the books.
In 1970 I was just a young country pumpkin greenhorn from rural conservative Austria with long hair, but I managed quite early on – through a contact in San Francisco – to get hold of some books that became bibles of the new counterculture.
The Greening of America – by Charles Reich
The Whole Earth Catalog – by Steward Brand
Small is beautiful : economics as if people mattered – by E.T. Schumacher
The Doors of Perception – by Aldous Huxley
Remember, Be Here Now – by Ram Das
I guess those books have been the right kind of spiritual nourishment that made my long hair grow even longer and nurtured my soul – that was hungry for freedom and meaning.
I am not trying to romanticize those times, because this wave of revolution also brought lots of upheaval, confusion, and divisions between us youngsters and the older generations. But I guess that’s always the case with any kind of revolution.
Now, looking back with the clarity of hindsight and social history, I honestly feel that this was not simply a political, social, racial and cultural revolution but a massive wave of cosmic energy sweeping through the collective consciousness of mankind.
And it has been felt and manifested primarily in the highly civilized countries of the West.
This was certainly the case in North America, where the American way of life of the 1950s has calcified into a smug caricature of materialism and religious conservatism, but also in Old Europe, where High Culture, tradition, and norms have been the bedrock of societies and everyday life.
I remember a distinct feeling as a young teenager, walking with my parents and siblings through my little village on the way to the church.
Suffocating.
It all changed dramatically when I left home to study in Vienna and there a new world opened.
First, the Art Avantgarde of the time, the Phantastische Realismus of the Wiener Schule, and even more than them, I was attracted to the work of Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser (his artist name).
Obviously there was also the avalanche of new music, phantasmic folk and rock and blues and all the new sounds from bands that came like mushrooms out of nowhere …
Pink Floyd, The Doors, The Nice, Leonard Cohen and a thousand other music groups, new interesting sounds came through the radio almost every day.
It was just a tremendous wave of innovation and breaking open the known structure of everything.
Obviously also of the lifestyle, choice of occupation, collective living and “free love,” and the rest.
I do not have rose-tinted glasses on when I look back; the whole experiment of a counterculture soon deteriorated in the 80s into disillusionment and hard drugs and yuppie-doom.
I guess I have been blessed to come across Ram Dass’s book “Remember, Be Here Now” early on and find an Indian guru and meditation teacher and a clearer, settled lifestyle in a spiritual community and later the countryside.
Looking back, I can clearly see what a blessing and protection that has been from the LSD burnout and free love confusion that afflicted so many of my friends.
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Talking about LSD
Back then, Aldous Huxley’s book The Doors of Perception has been a door opener for “truth seekers’ to use LSD “to find enlightenment.
And since it was not yet illegal early on and easily available, this substance provided easy access to inner spaces, phantasmic colors and light shows, and existential insights.
Again, I am not singing the gospel of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide – LSD – here, but back then – and only for a year and always with the right set and setting – it literally opened many inner doors for me.
Luckily I came to the point where I stopped and looked for meditation and a dedicated spiritual practice.
And that was the end of that.
[ Psychedelic Science Institute: What is a Psychedelic? ]
[ The term “psychedelic,” literally meaning “mind manifesting” or “soul revealing,” was first coined by British psychiatrist Dr. Humphry Osmond. He introduced the term at a New York Academy of Sciences meeting in 1957 ]
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Psychedelic Art
Now, why I have been inspired now in 2026 to write an article about psychedelic art, I honestly have no idea!
Because back in the day I was not really very much inspired by the art that came out of altered states experiences. LSD has the aftereffect of melting all colors and forms in more or less meaningless ways.
Maybe now it is more the Cosmic Wave of transformative energy that we experienced.
Maybe this is what I would hope to experience again, in a new way.
Because I feel that the world and humanity have arrived at a pivotal point, a crucial edge.
Something has to come to wake us up.
And change our destructive ways.
As I said, I don’t know.
But I pray.
And i trust
[ Here are a few animations that I made in the digital realm that remind me of the feeling of psychedelic art of the late 1960s and early 1970s. ]
[ Made wit javascript, webGL and shaders and put on video for smoother running on the web ]
[ The animations can be intense, in case you suffer from epilepsy, please be careful when watching those intense visual animations. ]
Welcome to the Galley
The psychedelic soundtrack of the 70s
