4. Cannabis-and-Art
Essex where I was raised-and-made, is famed for its artists. Actually, only the first part is true. Essex has a lot going for it (so I’m told), but its artistic pedigree is somewhat limited. Google Essex-and-art and the name John Constable gushes-out, except he’s Suffolk. Who else? Damon Albon, Ollie Murs, Grayson Perry and of course, Doctor-Feelgood. Don’t get me wrong - I love all these artists, but is that the top tier? (it is). So how does anyone with this cultural heritage develop an interest in art rather than scrap-metal-dealing? Cannabis helps.
One of the best things you can do when stoned is go round an art gallery, especially a modern art gallery. If you are not naturally overly-endowed with an artistic spark, which I’m not, cannabis can help you make that small-leap towards “getting-it”. Once you lose the one-to-one depiction of reality of a painting or artwork, you begin to see a human mind at work, that of the artist, intermediating between you and the artwork. It’s not about things, it’s about ideas represented as things. God, that sounds trite, but I finally “got there” after many trips to the Tate-modern and the Stedelijk. Without cannabis I could not have made that leap of understanding in an intuitive way rather than an intellectual one. I could begin to “feel” art, and it was very surprising and satisfying.
After being “switched-on” appreciation-wise, what art did I gravitated towards? Painting was my intro, but then I got into all the other stuff they do in galleries; installations, film-stuff, sound-stuff, and my favourite of all – big-stuff (you can see I’ve been learning the lingo). I and my partner Marvella particularly like big-stuff, the first and most memorable being the Olafur Eliasson weather project in the turbine-hall of the Tate-modern in 2003. All of us were there in our hundreds, on our backs, staring-up at the giant dim sun on the far wall engulfing the hall in an eerie, primeval light. I suspect fifty percent were on a similar enhanced perception regime to Marvella and me (i.e. stoned). It almost took you back to the hippy breakthrough year of 1967, of which I remember little (just too young), and Marvella remembers nothing (just too out-of-it).
Large-scale art also set us towards the 3rd Reich, so to speak. One of the many unsettling things about the Nazis was not so much that they developed their own inwards looking culture, but the really unsettling thing is that some of their art was actually impressive. This is not how it is supposed to be. It feels right that a murderous and gruesome regime should not produce good quality artifacts, but some of it was. So when there was an exhibition of Nazi art in Den Bosch, we were first in line with the tickets to see if we could square-this-circle.
We’d not been to Den Bosch before (or Hertogenbosch in full), and when we visited it for the first-and-only time the centre seemed to be under reconstruction. This meant no wandering around the market squares and hofs (courtyards), but straight into the design-museum at our appointed time (the exhibition was sold-out). I had been wondering how our fellow visitors may be constituted, old-hippies like us, arty-types, the confused, or middle-class Dutch crypto-fascists. In the crowds I couldn’t identify any of the first three categories, which left me a little concerned.
Anyway, the art itself was all there. Huge swastika flags, posters, uniforms (who doesn’t feel excited by an imposing uniform?) and the like, but two objects jumped out. The first was a giant wooden desk with intricate inlays of hard-woods with Nazi insignia. It was the sort of desk that would command a massive room where important people did important things. It was very, very scary. Perhaps this was part of Nazi art; not just to impress, but to terrorize. It certainly had this effect on us. The second was a Jerry-can. As utilitarian objects go this was, and is, a masterpiece. I remember a family friend, a desert-rat, saying these were especially sort-after as the British equivalents were crap. Did we manage to square-that-circle at Den Bosch? Probably not.
Apart from big-art, pop-art is also one of my favourites. When we were renting on the Brouwers’s-Gracht our bedroom walls were wallpapered with Roy Lichenstein’s jet fighter cartoons. Perhaps it’s not something you would put on your own property’s’ walls, but in a rental, well that’s cool. The Stedelijk always have a good selection of pop-art, and I particularly liked the fluorescent-tube orgy that used to be on display (I suppose this counts as pop-art, but perhaps it’s an installation). I’m trying to remember what colour flashing-tube the penis was that was being fellated (I tried to Google this but was stopped by a pornography blocker – would you believe it?).
What else? I have to mention performance-art. Growing-up in Essex my senses were occasionally assaulted by the site of Morris-Men, doing whatever it is they are supposed to be doing. Sir Thomas Beecham got this right when he (apocryphally?) stated that you should try everything in life, except incest and Morris-Dancing. Can you imagine this group being invited into your school playground and you being forced to endure them, for over an hour? The reality of this is even worse than the imagination, and I think I am still suffering from the psychological damage this caused me. Fortunately, Amsterdam and its SM-scene showed me performance-art could be stunning.
Let me give you just two examples. The first was a three-lady modern-dance troupe called the Shibboleths who did acts on “The Scene”. One of the Shibbs, Johanna, we knew well as she worked behind the bar at DSM4, our local SM club. They would all be dressed in skimpy leather jump-suits with the zips in them at the crotch for easy back-and-front access. They would erotically dance to the background music, which was mostly trance. I’ll just focus on one of their more memorable moves, which was particularly artistic/sexy when stoned on hash.
Two of the Shibbs would be kneeling-forward facing the audience, bums held high, with their arms making rhythmic movements to the music. The third, kneeling-upright, would take her left-and-right hands and position the thumb and middle-finger an appropriate distance apart. Standing behind the two kneeling girls she would then perform a synchronized double entry, the left hand’s thumb and middle-finger into the anus and vagina of the girl to the left, and the right hand’s thumb and middle-finger into the anus and vagina of the girl to the right. I’m unreliably informed that in Strine (Australian slang) this is referred to as “picking up a six pack”, or in this example, “picking up two six packs”.
What I found particularly artistic is the expressions of the Shibbs during these insertions. I have always maintained you can tell the difference between a front-fill and a back-fill simply by the facial expression they elicit. A back-fill causes the mouth to open, and the eyes to flash a surprised and slightly pained look. A front-fill causes the mouth to close, and the eyes to close in sympathy with a slightly pleasured look. The Shibbs had learnt to incorporate and exaggerate a hybrid expression of a pain/pleasure mix with eyes half open as they selflessly-and-generously shared their mental state with the audience, as true artists do. What was there not to like? By the way, a message from the surgeon-general - if you do practice this in the comfort of your own home, please make sure your nails are cut short and you use lots-of-lube.
The second example was at an SM-event held in a disused warehouse in Spaklerweg. There’s something about genuine warehouse events that aways especially thrills. I suppose it is a heightened sense of entering a forbidden, illegal and illicit world of the “the-underground”. The act in question was pony-play. The huge warehouse doors opened and in came two carriages pulled by the pony-girls, with horse-tails streaming-out from their butt-plugged bums. Riding each carriage was a mistress and a master, each expertly guiding their ponies by a deft combination of pulling on the reigns and the occasional flip of the whip. What an entrance, what an act.
What some souls don’t appreciate is the effect SM and fetish fashion has on the mainstream. Big names come to these events, and I’ve seen Jean Paul (Gaultier, not Satre) and his entourage soaking-up “The-Scene” and its experiences. Who knows what fashion items you may be wearing which were not launched on Paris and Milan runways, but created by the sub-cultures of Amsterdam and Berlin. I must admit though, I’ve yet to see horsetail butt-plugs hitting-the-high-street, though that’s something I am eagerly anticipating.
Moving away from appreciating art, cannabis can also play a decisive part in buying art, with both good and not-so-good aspects to it. On the positive side cannabis can make you see in a piece of art something that you would not see when straight. It might be detecting the artists underlying subject-matter such as freedom, joy, or even the darkness of the human soul. This ability to decrypt the message provided by cannabis can be pivotal in selecting one piece from another. On the surface they may look similar, but the artistic message is different. Its like you’re given special access to Xray glasses that can distinguish the good from the excellent, and a good-buy from a bad-buy.
This can go horribly-wrong though in that you perceive artistic subtlety that simply wasn’t there. So, although the vast majority of our buys have been excellent choices, a few have not. The first were the five kung-fu electric-hamsters we bought. We stopped at five as our expat-shopkeeper refused to sell us any more unless we showed her a doctor’s prescription. We would set them off, sometimes together as a choir, or at intervals in a round, where they would each perform a kung-fu fight while singing “Kung-Fu-Fighting”. Absolutely brilliant, but only when you’re really stoned. Unfortunately, because they were so cheaply made the choir of five quickly decreased to three, and then one, which was rather sad on its own.
The other two are staring at me now. They are a plastic/rubber one-fifth scale Friesian dairy-cow we call “Moo” (pretty neat, eh?), and a tin-chicken (no name). As I stare at them, and they stare back at me, I realize there was little-or-no artistic merit to either of them. But on the positive side they do bring back the happy experience of buying them – God, that shit I was on must have been stronger than I thought! Which I suppose leads to my advice for stoned art buyers; delay the purchase for one day so that your straight-self also has a chance to size-up your find.