It’s Friday the 13th. Probably an auspicious time to announce a new major exhibition of the cult psychedelic artist Burt Shonberg at the Buckland Museum of Witchcraft and Magick in Cleveland, Ohio, which runs from August 17th until November 1st. This is the first exhibition of Shonberg’s work since his one and only exhibition in 1967. It includes rarely seen paintings and some of Shonberg’s work belonging to the late science fiction writer, George Clayton Johnson.
Shonberg was an artist who perception of the world was seriously altered after he took part in Dr. Oscar Janiger’s experiments into the impact of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide 25 (LSD) on the creative processes.
During his first session, Shonberg received an injection of 100ml of LSD. This led him to see a hidden structure to the universe where “Humanity is literally hypnotized by the Dream Reality of momentum caused by life (meaning external influences).”
There is an illusion of movement in life which is not the truth. This all relates to so-called time. Time is motion—is evolution. One might say that the Big Criminal in all this is identification. To be apart from the form is the answer to real vision—consciousness. To be awake is to be really alive—to really exist.
March 1961: Janiger carries out a second experiment with Shonberg upping the dose of LSD to 150ml. At first, the artist didn’t think the trip was working but suddenly he was propelled into an experience that led him to believe he had left the clinic and had witnessed an undiscovered world where giants danced in the sky. He quickly understood that this “psychedelic experience” could “possibly reach to actual magic and beyond.”
There are, of course, certain things that one experiences in the transcendental state that are not possible to communicate in the usual way, so new types of parables would have to be created to get the message through. These discoveries I refer to could be insights or revelations into various aspects of the world we live in, nature, the mind itself, the universe, reality, and God.
The experiments radically altered Shonberg and his approach to painting. He continued experimenting with LSD which eventually led him to believe he was a living embodiment of Baphomet—“a divine androgyne, a unification of light and darkness, male and female and the macro and microcosm,” or Aleister Crowley’s pagan, pre-Christian deity, or “the Devil in all his bestial majesty.”
Shonberg’s reputation has come under considerable reappraisal of late, especially after Spencer Kansa wrote the first biography on the artist Out There: The Transcendent Life and Art of Burt Shonberg three years ago. This summer a documentary called Out Here is described as an “in depth look at the famous Hollywood LSD painter” with contributions from the artists, actors, and friends who knew him.
A new updated edition of Spencer Kansa’s biography on Shonberg will be released on Kindle next year. I contacted Kansa to find out what new information he had received.
Spencer Kansa: Since publication, I’ve been contacted by people whose parents were friends of Burt back in the day, who’ve shared personal stories and sent wonderful new examples of his artwork to me. And there are more examples of the illustrations he did back in the ‘50s for men’s magazines like Escapade.
Before I wrote my biography of him, it was long thought that Burt’s main artistic inspiration was Salvador Dali, but during the research and writing of the book, I detected that Picasso may actually have been an even bigger influence on him, and I feel vindicated that I made this point, as I found an interview with him, post-publication, in which he confirms this. This news also helped clear up another mystery for me. As I recount in the book, Burt would sometimes be hired to paint frescos on the bottom of people’s swimming pools in LA, and, for years, I wondered where he might have gotten this idea from. And then, a few months after publication, I read about the Villa El Martinete swimming pool in Malaga, which Picasso decorated in 1961, that belonged to his friend, Antonio el Bailarín, the flamenco dancer. Furthermore, I discovered that Burt was interviewed by Joe Pyne, on his radio, not his TV show, and I’m currently trying to get a-hold of that tape. I know where it is but it’s been difficult to arrange due to the pandemic.
Spencer’s biog has received considerable praise most noteworthy from Burt’s pal, Hampton Fancher who said:
Spencer’s venture undoes the old prediction of, you can’t go back again. His book is a journey it surprised me to take. I visited people and places that stunned me to remember, things forgotten I didn’t know were even there. Familiar as my nose, my hand, but lost for a lifetime. I thank him for having the fascination and muscle to stick to it all the way down that singular oddity of a road he took to take us there.
With thanks to Spencer Kansa.