This may at first seem a bit off topic but I guess there are elements of
recycled culture in LSD blotter art. Anyway, I'm rambling before I've
even started. My primary question to the list is, does anyone know of a
way to contact Mark McCloud the artist and blotter art collector? I'd
like to interview him for a chapter on a book I'm writing and I know a
bunch of you guys are in the SF area, where he resides, and you're
normally spot on for stuff like this.
This is for a chapter on the branding of illegal drugs. Until I started
researching it I hadn't even realised that blotter art had achieved any
level of recognition as an art form. I was looking at the way brands are
used in marketing illegal drugs and the ways they reflect the
sub-culture into which they are sold.
It's interesting that Ecstasy manufacturers commonly appropriate top
level brands. In the UK makes of car - Mitsubishi, Rolls Royce, Ferrari,
Maserati, Audi - and designer labels - Dolce and Gabana, Armani, Clavin
Klein, Chanel - are the logos most often nicked for Es. While this
obviously has a lot to do with the practicalities of pressing a logo
onto a pill, that simpler logos are easier to rip off, presumably there
is also a conclusion to be made about the mindset of the average
consumer and indeed the experience the consumer wants from the drug.
Compared to LSD blotter art, which is much more aware, involved and just
plain creative, Ecstasy logos are pretty much lowest-common-denominator
consumer-led. I suppose the culture is a lot less cerebral all round.
But blotter art also appropriates regularly - Donald Duck, Fat Freddy's
Cat, Batman, Superman, you name it. It just goes a bit deeper.
Thoughts? And on how this logo piracy relates to appropriative art?
Apologies for unformed thought splurge.
Mark Blacklock
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