By DIAN HANSON, ERIC GODFLAND, PAUL KRASSNER (Taschen; 2014)
What a great idea: a profusely illustrated guide to pornography of the psychedelic era, put out by the prestige outfit Taschen! And it’s quite a book, with a wealth of XXX-rated imagery packed into a luxuriously packaged and designed hardcover doorstop. Der Spiegel once called Taschen’s Muhammad Ali themed publication GOAT—THE GREATEST OF ALL TIME the “biggest, heaviest, most radiant thing ever printed in the history of civilization,” a description that could easily be substituted for PSYCHEDELIC SEX.
…a wealth of XXX-rated imagery packed into a luxuriously packaged and designed hardcover doorstop
The book’s compiler was Dian Hanson, a former magazine editor (of OUI, Juggs and many other adult oriented periodicals) and current overseer of Taschen’s “Sexy Book” division. Hanson’s most prominent Taschen publication was 2010’s 3-D enhanced LITTLE BIG BUTT BOOK, but I say PSYCHEDELIC SEX deserves a place of honor in her pantheon, and in the study of pornography overall, it being a history book I think we can all enjoy.
Contained in these pages is “My Life in Tie-Dye,” a mini-memoir by Hanson in which she elucidates her personal history with psychedelic pornography. It began in her adolescent years in Seattle, which occurred in the early 1970s, when “sleeping around was practically a virtue and girls like me dove in as fast as the boys.” Hanson claims (proudly) to have celebrated her eighteenth birthday by visiting an adult bookstore, although “by 1972 the only psychedelic items in the adult bookstore were hippies like me.”
A lengthy essay entitled “Psychedelic Dayz” by Eric Godtland, which takes up much of the book, expands on that last point. The psychedelic era, Godtland argues, was a short-lived one, spanning the years 1967-72, yet it “spawned a genre of erotica that was born fully grown, completely cohesive in look and feel.” Female empowerment contributed to the formation of this genre, as did the invention of the birth control pill and the drug culture of the late 1960s.
…this book’s true selling point is its visual content, which is positively mind-blowing in its unapologetic explicitness and sheer variety.
An introductory essay, “The Summer of Love Ain’t Over Yet” by counterculture legend Paul Krassner, argues that the spirit of the time lives on. His major piece of evidence: the “eroticization of the news” that occurred during the Bill Clinton era, as “ever since Paula Jones accused Clinton of dropping his pants, exposing his gubernatorial gonads and requesting oral sex, this country has not been the same.”
But again, this book’s true selling point is its visual content, which is positively mind-blowing in its unapologetic explicitness and sheer variety. Taken from now-forgotten publications like Ankh, Naked Confessions and Cinema Keyhole, as well as vintage flyers and posters, the images tend to be marked by day-glow body paint, swirly abstract backgrounds, garish props (including balloons, gaudy bed sheets and, of course, peace symbols) and cut-and-paste configurations (guys peeping out from vaginas, a woman riding a penis, etc.). Also, the naked bodies on display tend to diverge from modern standards of beauty, meaning the people shown here, both male and female, are very hairy.
