Drugs, Art Nouveau, and Psychedelic

leaving it in its "freebase" form, leaving crack cocaine to be smoked. Cocaine interferes with the pain receptors similar to opium, but the high feels different. People describe the high as an increasing sense of energy and alertness, an extremely elevated mood, and a feeling of supremacy. Some do describe other feelings such as irritability, paranoia, restlessness, and anxiety. Could these drugs have influenced the creation and popularity of Art Nouveau?

The highs these two drugs gave people are very similar to the highs that people where having during the 1970's when hippies where doing drugs. So there is a very strong link between the two. If you look at the high of Opium the extreme relaxed state the soft colors and movements of Art Nouveau would be an ideal style of art to look at. It would give you a feeling of being surrounded by nature and the forest. The drug could have been a strong link between the idea and creation of this popular style.

When cocaine came into popularity Art Nouveau would still be a good style to be around based on how it moved and looked like nature. The movement of the vines could enhance the sense of energy people where feeling. Also capturing and putting the look of nature in to their homes could give people a sense of supremacy over mother earth. Along with having nature surrounding a person creates a calming effect helping the feelings of irritability and paranoia to not take hold.

Opium became banned in 1880, as do eventually most drugs such as cocaine witch started to become outlawed in 1895. During that time Art Nouveau went out of style. Bringing in the age of industrialism, but all styles come and go. Eventually a style will come back with extreme force. The question though is when a style comes back with such extreme force are the circumstances the same as before? Such as when Art Nouveau came back into style during the 1960's to 1970's. The hippie days took a new spin on the style of Art Nouveau giving it extremely bright colors and patterns inspired but the style, such as a piece sine and rainbow. (Piece sine seen in images bellow.)

The new style emerging from the 1960 -1970 was called Psychedelic. This style took on the form of Art Nouveau with bright colors. (Seen in Victor Moscoso poster.) They normally printed colors like bright pink on blue paper to trick the eye into seeing the design actually move. (Seen in the Who Rolled Mary Jane? Poster.) The words on most posters followed the curves of the images, or where pinched in areas. Normally they where bubbled as well. (Seen in the Wes Wilson poster.) They used designs from the past and just changed the colors and words or based their designs on nature as well. The hippie aria was all about piece, love and getting high. The style was addicting and hard to look away from, even more so when the picture looked like it was moving. During a time of rebellion and teen angst this style was all about