Last week, we talked about dabs and the art of dabbing – Check out our blog post, Let’s Dabble in Dabs – There’s Room for Vapes, Too – It’s a drippin’ good time there.
I guess you could say we were inspired by it. We decided to do a lil dabblin’ ourselves while… painting? Arting? I think “arting” is more appropo, even though it isn’t rightfully a word.
After the green-fog lifted, I stared at my painting and felt reminiscent of Salavdor Dali… not in scope of talent, but in overall weirdness. I was actually quite impressed – in the right corner there was a sitting cat and above him was a gargantuan bat that was struggling to keep his belly up. And there were random bouts of text EVERYWHERE. At one point I must have spilled water colors across the page cuz there was a whole lotta green… not ganj, the color. Since my high triggered some sort of surrealist vibe with my paintbrush, I delved into the thick of it and found that this art style is pretty cool, and has a fascinating history!
Let’s go on an interactive deep-dive into the minds of great artists like Dali, Pablo Picasso, and Rene Magritte – only this time? Let’s get a lil zooted. It’s not gunna make a whole lotta sense, but we’re here to have fun, so let’s just do it!
I’m going to set the scene for you:
Stage 1: Set To Green Screen
I feel like I need to clarify – I’m not an artist. I didn’t want set the precedent that this is an *ACTUAL* Picasso… I had some multi-medium sheets, water colors, fine art pens – what I DIDN’T have was a single clue what to expect from this. I thought it’d be neat to get stoned and paint, and honestly? That’s about all the thought I had put into it.
I grabbed my *rig, a dollop of cannabis concentrate, and got to work on gettin’ lit. If you’re a seasoned user, (or read our blog post) you know well this won’t take too long! Cannabis concentrates contain anywhere from 50-90% THC, much more potent than stand-alone flower.
After half an hour, I had already gone to town on my paper. I scribbled words, broken quotes, and other literary junk across the back of the paper like some sort of Tumblr aesthetic background. I was feelin’ pretty good at the beginning of this high, too. Most of the words/broken phrases I used were happy, or progressively positive, anyway.
As I continued to toke on, I began to draw random images in paint across the text. Now, I’m no Picasso… this did not look telligible, at all. I must have been dissatisfied while stoned because I did try to outline my paintball blurbs with my ink pen; this is where the funky shapes really began to…. Well, take shape.
Stage 1: End Scene – That Was Surreal.
After I took pen to paint, the high began to wan – and the drama llama sighs again. I wasn’t quite ready for my zoot to scoot, but I had this incredible piece of art to admire. I took one look and was awestruck. What the funk even was this… It was familiar, however. I must have drawn subconscious inspiration from Salavdor Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory” art piece – the clocks all strewn about the landscape, much like the cat and bat that hung at various corners of my chickenscratch. I took to Google for a quick reference and fell down a rabbit hole into 20th century artistic reform and how the surrealism movement influenced a generation of creators.
A Revolution of the Right Brained
During World War I and World War II era, surrealism blossomed into a cultural movement that shook up the visual and literary worlds of the 20th century. Wanting to challenge the view/readers’ imaginations, content creators would mesh ordinary landscapes with oxymoronic images to define rationale and trigger out-box thinking to their audience. A really cool method of cutting up an image into little squares then reassembling them without any regard for its initial portrait- called “cubomania”- was a style of surrealist collage making that went completely outside of its spectrum. There was also a neat literary adaptation of surrealism called calligrammes (created by Guillaume Apolliarie in 1918) that used both the spatial positioning of words and their type-face as part of the poem itself. (Remember concrete poetry from high school?? That stuff!)
Andre Breton, who published The Surrealist Manifesto in 1924, once defined the Surrealism Movement as: “an absolute reality, a surreality” in the hopes that fantasy and everyday life would come together in the natural realm. Salvador Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory” is one of the most renowned examples of surrealist artwork. Dali was outspoken in his desire to challenge what is “normal” and acceptable.
Dali and Dabs – Where’s the Connection There?
Salvador Dali wasn’t a consumer of cannabis. And he famously coined the term when asked of his substance use: “I don’t use drugs, I AM drugs.” (You could probably come to that conclusion well enough on your own if you take a gander at his paintings for a moment or two.) However during the surrealism movement of the 20th century, cannabis was legalized; the impressions left on the iconically strange art of that era is world- renowned.
Andre Breton, publisher of The Surrealist Manifesto, was a regular consumer of hash; he said that it helped him to: “deconstruct reality when I’m awake and expand my dream world when I’m asleep.” Many surrealist artists have utilized cannabis for the same purposes I did – to stimulate the brain and relax it well enough to get those creative juices flowing. Whether you’re just inherently gifted as the godfather of psychedelic staples, (Dali) or you’re using cannabis to enrich your mind to further inspiration, cannabis and art is a classic combination on a one-way trip to Creation Station.
The Modern “Surrealist” Movement in the Cannaworld
With the 2018 legalization of industrialized hemp, a myriad of cannabinoids have made their way into the market in all sorts of forms. In a way, we’re seeing the cannabis world revolutionize itself much in the way that art did during the Surrealist Movement of the 1920’s.
One quick Google search and you’ll find yourself among such gem as: anglerfish water pipes (in the exact shape of the actual fish) Delta 8 pancake mix, and weed snus for the avid cowboy… People are putting cannabis in just about anything, crossing the boundaries of what is typically normal or accepted in today’s society. (Remind you of anyone?)
To Vibe the “Surreal” Spirit:
I honestly had a blast with this! And I hope you enjoyed reading about the experience, too. In another blog post: Track Your High we reviewed various ways in which you, the user, can log your canna’periences to learn the most about you, your body, and your reactions to it. I implemented a lot of free-writing into this project to allow my mind to fully ease into this experiment without any expectations! If you’d like to recreate this “surreal” vibe, we recommend to give our aforementioned text a quick glance, get your journal and art supplies ready, and last- but certainly not least- your pick of nature’s sweet grass. Once you’ve got everything you need, it’s time to gas up that brain and turn in your ticket for a seat on that Creative Train.
