This event is free and open to the public. Registration is required.
The CSWR invites Dr. Erik Davis into conversation for the launch of his new book, Blotter: The Untold Story of an Acid Medium (to be released on April 30, 2024). Blotter is the first account of its kind, centering the history, art, and design of the iconic drug delivery device for lysergic acid diethylamide-25, or LSD. Created in collaboration with Mark McCloud's Institute of Illegal Images, the world's largest archive of blotter art, Davis's boldly illustrated exhibition treats his outsider subject with the serious, art-historical respect it deserves, while also staying true to the sense of play, irreverence, and adventure inherent in psychedelic exploration.
Davis weaves together two main stories: first, the largely unknown history of blotter paper's development in the 1960s and its later flowering in the 1970s and 1980s; and second, the story of how San Francisco artist, professor, and “freak” McCloud began collecting blotter and ultimately became embroiled with the LSD trade. The book closes with a unique discussion of the market for “vanity blotter”—more recent perforated papers produced as collectible art objects never meant to be dipped in LSD. While vanity blotters are intimately related to the underground blotters of the LSD trade, they effectively open up their own visual world. As the ultimate document of this ephemeral artform, Blotter represents an exceptional contribution to the scholarship of art and psychedelics that will entertain older readers with lysergic nostalgia and younger readers with its image-driven journey through a colorful and scandalous corner of psychedelic lore.
Copies of Blotter will be available for purchase at the event from the MIT Press Bookstore.
