As a teenager Rick Griffin's roots were in 1950s Californai surfer culture, with its own unique music and clothes. Griffin went on to study for a short time at CalArts school in Los Angeles. However he took an immediate dislike to simple modern type and good taste and took off, moving in 1965 to San Fransisco where he designed posters for rock 'n' roll bands at the city's legendary Fillmore Auditorium and the Avalon Ballroom.

Griffin was an enthusiastic participant in the new drug culture and had taken part in the writer Ken Kesey's experimental counter culture gatherings. The influence of these experiences is reflected in one his hallmarks of his stytle: the use of wierd imagery, snakes, skulls, insects. bizarre science fiction creatures and Hell's Angel motifs.

The effect of LSD on Griffin's work was in his use of luminous and intense colours that were blanced but chromatically opposite. In the 1960's Griffin reclaimed colour as a valid means of graphic expression. The new pop poster became the perfect expression of the new drug culture.

Griffins work also epitomized the psycedelic rejection of legible typography. The copy on his posters took legibillity to the limit, working on the premise that if the image was exciting enough people would not only take the trouble to decipher the information but also enjoy the process of decoding. From 20th Century Design-Catherine McDermot
http://www.myraltis.co.uk/rickgriffin/

While drugs are mentioned here, I feel that this topic is not right for this forum.

unless the originator can explain why it should stay here, I am moving it to...[thinking]...Printed matter, as it seems [marginally] better than Spurious.


Second thought, make that Media....

[This message has been edited by Metaphysicist (edited 12-09-2002).]

I received an e-mail from adihash, that said, in part:

quote:

---

I posted this because I thought it showed how using drugs responsibly dosn't always mess your life up, and I thought his artwork is amazing and a tribute to how drugs can be used as something other than getting high.

I thought it would spark some disscusion on other medias that drug's influence like music and other creative forms/

Well thats my reason for posting if you still don't agree it should be in BLTC fair enough.

---

As I agree with that, I am reopening the thread [even though it is now also running in Media]

theres that tool song, i don't know who orinigally said it...it was something to the extent of:

if you don't like drugs then take all your cd's, and tape's, and throw them away. because the people that made all of your records were really fucking high.


this statement i think is 100% right.

what does BLTC stand for?

Better Living Through Chemistry

[This message has been edited by aquila (edited 12-10-2002).]

There's no doubt that just about every great art and artist has been influenced by the consciousness-shifting, perspective-altering properties of psychotropic drugs. Creative revolution would surely stagnate under the demise of the emmisary of altered mind perception and its fruits of mind expansion.

A few less-obvious great artists, intellectuals and revolutionaries that were greatly influenced by drugs:

Isaac Abrams, artist LSD
Richard Alpert (also known as Baba Ram Das), psychologist, author, guru LSD
Lewis Daniel Armstrong, musician ("Satchmo") marijuana
Allen Atwell, artist LSD
Marcus Aurelius, philosopher, emperor of Rome opium
Ginger Baker, musician amphetamines
Tallulah Bankhead, actress cocaine
Charles Baudelaire, poet absinthe
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, poet opium
Lenny Bruce, comedian, free speech activist marijuana, heroin
William S. Burroughs, historian, author: "Naked Lunch", "I, Claudius" cocaine, opium
Lewis Carrol, mathematician, photographer, author: "Alice in Wonderland" mushrooms
Grover Cleveland, U.S. president cocaine
Jean Cocteau, playwrite: "Orpheus" opium
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet: "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" opium (laudanum)
Wilkie Collins, author: "The Moonstone" opium
Aleister Crowley, magician, author: "Magick Without Tears", "Moonchild", "The Book of Thoth", "Diary of a Drug Fiend", "Theory of Magick" EVERYTHING
Salivor Dali, painter "Everyone should eat hashish, but only once." hashish
Thomas DeQuincy, author: "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater" opium (laudanum)
Charles Dickens, author: "A Christmas Carol", "Oliver Twist" opium
Arthur Conan Doyle, logican, author: "Sherlock Holmes" (a cocaine user) opium
Isadora Duncan (revolutionized dance) cocaine
Thomas Alva Edison, inventor, industrialist cocaine, alcohol
Havelock Ellis, physician, author: "Psychology of Sex", essay: "Mezcal: A New Artificial Paradise" peyote
Ben Franklin, inventor, publisher, scientist, American statesman opium, marijuana
Sigmund Freud, physician, "Father of Psychoanalysis" cocaine
Al Gore, U.S. vice-president marijuana
Ulysses S. Grant, U.S. president cocaine, alcohol
Albert Hoffman, chemist, discovered LSD and became a proponant LSD
Billie Holliday, singer opium
Aldous Huxley, author: "Brave New World", "Island", "Doors of Perception" mescaline
William James, physician, philosopher nitrous oxide, ether, peyote
Thomas Jefferson, U.S. president, inventor, architect, marijuana farmer marijuana
Jesus the Nazerite, Carpenter, Rabbi, "Christ"
* Amanita muscaria, also known as fly agaric. Evidence available from R. Gordon Wasson, ("Soma, The Divine Mushroom of Immortality") mushroom expert and executive to J.P. Morgan. Another case was made by John M. Allegro, noted Bible scholar and linguist, who presented evidence in "The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross" that the story of Jesus was actually an allegory on the properties of the amanita. alcohol, mushrooms*
Steve Jobs, co-creator of the Apple computer, the NeXt computer, and former head of Apple Computers, Inc. marijuana, LSD
John Keats, poet opium
Ken Kesey, author: "One Flew Over the Coo-Coo's Nest", "Once a Great Notion"
*EVERYTHING*
Archibald Leach (actor Cary Grant) LSD
Timothy Leary, psychologist, Father of Transactional Analysis, software author: "Mindwheel". "Turn on, tune in, drop out." LSD, marijuana
Pope Leo XIII cocaine
John Cunningham Lilly, physician, scientist (electronics, dolphin communication, sensory deprivation), philosopher, author: "Mind of the Dolphin", "Center of the Cyclone" LSD, ketamine
Bela Lugosi, actor opium, morphine
David Lynch, Director mushrooms, LSD
Bob Marley, musician "The Father of Reggae Music" marijuana
Judge Marquat, Arizona Supreme Court Justice, involved in Miranda ruling. marijuana
Wier Mitchell, physician, author: "Injuries of the Nerves and their Consequences" peyote
Mohammed, spiritual leader hashish
Jack Nicholson, actor marijuana, LSD
Philippus Aureolus Paracelsus, Father of Modern Medicine opium
Pablo Picasso, painter, "The smell of opium is the least stupid smell in the world." opium
Plotinus, Roman philosopher, 205-270 AD opium
Edgar Allen Poe, poet, author: "The Raven", "The Fall of the House of Usher" opium
Jackson Pollack, painter (His work sold for up to $8,000,000 a piece.) alcohol
Cole Porter, composer cocaine
Elvis Presley, singer, actor prescription drugs
Cardinal Duc de Richelieu, leading minister to king Louis XIII opium
Sir Walter Scott, poet, author opium
Shelly, poet opium
Arlene Sklar-Weinstein, artist LSD
Robert Louis Stevenson, author cocaine, morphine
Desmond Taylor, film director cocaine
Vincent Van Gogh, painter absinthe, camphor
Jesse Ventura, wrestler, governor of Minnesota marijuana
Jules Verne, author: "The Time Machine", "War of the Worlds", "2,000 Leagues Under the Sea" cocaine
George Washington, U.S. president, marijuana farmer marijuana (sensimilla)
Allen Watts, Zen philosopher, masters degree in religion, doctorate in divinity, author: "The Joyous Cosmology", "Zen Sticks, Zen Bones", "The Taboo against Knowing Who You Are", "The Wisdom of Insecurity". LSD, marijuana, mescaline, psilocybin, dimethyl-tryptamine (DMT), alcohol
Andrew Wiel, physician, psychopharmicologist, anthropologist, fire-walker, alternative health expert, author: "The Natural Mind", "Spontaneous Healing", "8 Weeks to Optimum Health" marijuana, peyote, yage (S. American hallucinagin)
William Wilberforce, almost singlehandedly got slavery abolished throughout the British Empire opium

And every great Rock, Alt, Electronic, Hip-hop and Jazz band there ever was, most great modern actors, and most great painters and artists.

Really now...were would we be without mind-altering drugs?

Nice work on the extensive list neitz. I especially dug Piccaso's opium smell quote and have to agree with him.
Also 40oz. The guy in the tool song sample was a comedian named Bill Hicks. He died of cancer in 1995 or 96 I believe. Check out some of his works. He was quite funny, and very astute in most of his observation. He was a very dark comedian, and a lot of his routines were drug related, and very pro drugs. The man was an artist, very sophisticated. A true Totse type comedian if there ever was one. Agnostic to the Nth degree.

``not all drugs are good though... some of 'em are great. Just gotta know your way around 'em.``

Bill Hicks

has anyone listened to the first album by a British group called the prodigy the albums called experience.

It is brilliant when your not on drugs but it is especially brilliant dancing to it on ecstasy its as though it was made especially for it. It was but they soon got sick of making music that wasn't a challenge ( we all know we'll dance to anything on XTC)

I don't think there second album was as good as the first. I thought it was great how it was this type of music made by people that openly made it clear they used ecstacy. Yet it was so massivly popular.

people living in the UK can remember tha massive properganda telling people ecstacy would kill you, and here where these people making brilliant music that was made for ecstacy.

And there was nothing all these stuck-up upper class politicans could do about it.