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Under the Influence

Was it the free love, the politics, or the acid that made films of the '60s so trippy?

Comments (0) By J. Hoberman Tuesday, Aug 7 2007
...continued from page 1
James Whitney's Lapis (1963-1966), 16 mm film transferred to HD Digital Cinema, color, sound; 10 mins.
image: Estate of John and James Whitney, copyright 2007
James Whitney's Lapis (1963-1966), 16 mm film transferred to HD Digital Cinema, color, sound; 10 mins.

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Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era
Through September 16, Whitney Museum

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The academic equivalent to Invocation of My Demon Brother is Larry Jordan's The Sacred Art of Tibet (1972), a commissioned film, in which electronic growling overwhelms explanatory voiceover and the artworks themselves are "animated" through aggressive zooming and flash-frame superimposition. Reality is a "magic show," the narrator informs us. And magical thinking was then perceived as a form of political action. (The Summer of Love was actually the Marriage of Heaven and Hell: Newark and Detroit burned while the Haight preened in the klieg lights of total media attention.) Thus the Whitney's "War, Protest, and Counterculture" program includes Piece Mandala/End the Waras well as the show's preeminent mind-fuck acid-flashback, Third World Newsreel's classic rabble-rouser cf1 America(1969).

The apparitions in this rough and ready riot-compilation, racing through classic rock chestnuts "Gimme Shelter" and "Fortunate Son" to climax with the keening crescendo of Steppenwolf's heavy-metal concerto dirge "Monster/Suicide/America," are more fantastic than the monsters of Tibet Buddhism. Not just Black Panthers but ultra-left Viet-vets proclaim themselves "hip to imperialism." Those gyrating chicks are in the street. And who are the white high school revolutionaries earnestly rapping about "capitalist run-of-the-mill bullshit"? What pill made them say that?

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