The Art of Mescaline

Mike Jay

In the modern west, the dazzling visions generated by mescaline laid the foundations for psychedelic art. In non-western cultures, the mescaline-containing cacti have generated their own distinctive visual traditions. Using rarely seen images, Mike Jay surveys the long history of mescaline-related art: from the Huichol of tribal Mexico to the Native American Church, from surrealism and the avant-garde to the emergence of modern psychedelic tropes in the 1950s. In the process he considers what we mean by psychedelic art, and how it relates to the experience that underlies it.