George Washington on Acid
Quote from CohentheWriter on 6. May 2022, 21:03Museum Link: https://app.museumofcryptoart.com/collection/permanent-collection?collection=0xb932a70a57673d89f4acffbe830e8ed7f75fb9e0&token=10149&page=3
Source Link: https://superrare.com/artwork-v2/george-washington-on-acid-10149
Date Minted: May 11, 2020
Artist Description: Founding Fathers on Acid series, 002 George Washington
CohentheWriter’s Commentary:
This isn’t the only piece in Zebbler’s oeuvre to feel like it was ripped from a rave setting. George Washington on Acid is one of 7 such portraits of a currency-captured Founding Father that Zebbler has created (Thomas Jefferson, Ulysses S. Grant, Andrew Jackson, etc.), but the entire series merely extends the wild and pulsing sensibility that seems to beat through every artwork Zebbler created. This is the artist partially responsible for the 2007 Boston Mooninite Panic —a case of city police mischaracterizing guerilla marketing materials for IEDs— so he is not above public outrage, nor is he above lampooning certain structures. Yes, here in George Washington on Acid and the series as a whole, Zebbler sets himself upon Fiat currency, upon US history, and upon historical reverence, but many of his works toe the line between appropriation and take-down. The Trash Art-esque creator of pieces like Square, Circle, and Triangle, Zebbler’s pieces are almost always filled with a color fascination, an irreverence, and a dance floor movement. Find a throughline in his works if you like, or simply sit back and enjoy the simple cartoonishness of pieces like George Washington on Acid, which asks only that you give to it what you desire; it will take all you provide and spit it back in equal measure, only neon-colored and scatterbrained.
Say we just wanted to look at a pretty picture, or approach this from the mindless vantage point of a teenage stoner. Why, George Washington on Acid is more than happy to oblige. The discotech colors flashing behind the central figure: red, green, blue, turquoise, purple, all flashing and wiping and scattering throughout the image, so rich and vibrant; almost too rich and vibrant, like a kitschy Christmas display. And then the actual meat of the image itself, the facsimile of George Washington, texture and shape taken directly from his image as it appears on the 1-dollar bill, but here he is presented as neither stately or dominant, but as both playful and illicit. What’s that on his outstretched tongue? A tab of blotter acid, waves of chromatic color echoing away from it like ripples in a pond. As if to emphasize the ridiculousness of the image itself, Zebbler has animated Washington’s face so that his forehead moves about, as if he’s furrowing his brow, as if he’s raising an eyebrow slyly, as if he’s losing control of his faculties as the effect of the drug on his tongue begins to take hold. Really, there’s no pressing need to explore the piece deeper than this. It’s already wild to behold. It’s already kind of hilarious. It already gets its point mostly across: Take that American values!
But say we wanted to dive a bit deeper, and admire this piece for its obvious ridicule of accepted recipients of systemic sacrosanctity. Or perhaps we wanted to explore what exactly it’s trying to say about concepts like American elitism or fiat currency. Echoing the acid trip George Washington on Acid more-or-less purports to behold, we get what we put into this piece, and it returns as powerful an effect as we seek. Because if there’s anything that American society conceptually holds dear and relies on, it’s the infallibility of the U.S. dollar. One can argue that atop this simple idea —that America’s dependable currency binds the world together— is built so much of America’s extraneous cultural value: the love of Constitution, the love of freedom, the assumed export of all American pop-cultural ideals into the larger world. It all stems from the overall comfort and stability that the currency provides, which trickles down into the government, which supposedly trickles down into the citizens, allowing us to worry not en masse about food insecurity or joblessness, but frivolous, sociologically-decadent concerns like vaccine hesitancy and mischaracterizations of fascism.
Zebbler uses George Washington, ubiquitous symbol of both American exceptionalism and hard American currency, and either supposes that this symbol has been given a tab of acid, or wonders what would happen if it one day is. In both cases, things are getting weird. The serious and strong foundation of the country’s ideals, well they might begin to stretch and wiggle and stop taking themselves so seriously. And what happens then? George Washington raises his eyebrows in exultation. American exceptionalism reduced to comedy. I’m adept at neither economics nor geopolitics, and I don’t claim to know Zebbler’s mind, but one could conceivably claim that there is a commentary here on America’s standing in the world, its possible reduction from a grandiose and redoubtable concept to something wonky and strange and even overtly experimental. I suppose that makes sense if we view Washington’s acid trip as something overarchingly negative, focusing on the acid trip as a symbol. But if we see it as an invitation, like we’ve given these underlying American concepts a tab of acid and allowed them a bit more freedom to explore themselves, a bit more creativity, then look at what wonderful things appear: even the 1st president himself appears to have fun, smiling and sticking his tongue out, a far cry from the classically imposing image we mostly know him by.
Reduce the American dollar’s sacred quality by even a bit, give it a little space in which to play, and Zebbler seems to be suggesting that this signals either a complete disintegration of America’s place on a world stage, or that we should be anticipating the coming creativity. Take off those shoes and sit down a while, let’s get a little weird and see what happens.
Source Link: https://superrare.com/artwork-v2/george-washington-on-acid-10149
Date Minted: May 11, 2020
Artist Description: Founding Fathers on Acid series, 002 George Washington
CohentheWriter’s Commentary:
This isn’t the only piece in Zebbler’s oeuvre to feel like it was ripped from a rave setting. George Washington on Acid is one of 7 such portraits of a currency-captured Founding Father that Zebbler has created (Thomas Jefferson, Ulysses S. Grant, Andrew Jackson, etc.), but the entire series merely extends the wild and pulsing sensibility that seems to beat through every artwork Zebbler created. This is the artist partially responsible for the 2007 Boston Mooninite Panic —a case of city police mischaracterizing guerilla marketing materials for IEDs— so he is not above public outrage, nor is he above lampooning certain structures. Yes, here in George Washington on Acid and the series as a whole, Zebbler sets himself upon Fiat currency, upon US history, and upon historical reverence, but many of his works toe the line between appropriation and take-down. The Trash Art-esque creator of pieces like Square, Circle, and Triangle, Zebbler’s pieces are almost always filled with a color fascination, an irreverence, and a dance floor movement. Find a throughline in his works if you like, or simply sit back and enjoy the simple cartoonishness of pieces like George Washington on Acid, which asks only that you give to it what you desire; it will take all you provide and spit it back in equal measure, only neon-colored and scatterbrained.
Say we just wanted to look at a pretty picture, or approach this from the mindless vantage point of a teenage stoner. Why, George Washington on Acid is more than happy to oblige. The discotech colors flashing behind the central figure: red, green, blue, turquoise, purple, all flashing and wiping and scattering throughout the image, so rich and vibrant; almost too rich and vibrant, like a kitschy Christmas display. And then the actual meat of the image itself, the facsimile of George Washington, texture and shape taken directly from his image as it appears on the 1-dollar bill, but here he is presented as neither stately or dominant, but as both playful and illicit. What’s that on his outstretched tongue? A tab of blotter acid, waves of chromatic color echoing away from it like ripples in a pond. As if to emphasize the ridiculousness of the image itself, Zebbler has animated Washington’s face so that his forehead moves about, as if he’s furrowing his brow, as if he’s raising an eyebrow slyly, as if he’s losing control of his faculties as the effect of the drug on his tongue begins to take hold. Really, there’s no pressing need to explore the piece deeper than this. It’s already wild to behold. It’s already kind of hilarious. It already gets its point mostly across: Take that American values!
But say we wanted to dive a bit deeper, and admire this piece for its obvious ridicule of accepted recipients of systemic sacrosanctity. Or perhaps we wanted to explore what exactly it’s trying to say about concepts like American elitism or fiat currency. Echoing the acid trip George Washington on Acid more-or-less purports to behold, we get what we put into this piece, and it returns as powerful an effect as we seek. Because if there’s anything that American society conceptually holds dear and relies on, it’s the infallibility of the U.S. dollar. One can argue that atop this simple idea —that America’s dependable currency binds the world together— is built so much of America’s extraneous cultural value: the love of Constitution, the love of freedom, the assumed export of all American pop-cultural ideals into the larger world. It all stems from the overall comfort and stability that the currency provides, which trickles down into the government, which supposedly trickles down into the citizens, allowing us to worry not en masse about food insecurity or joblessness, but frivolous, sociologically-decadent concerns like vaccine hesitancy and mischaracterizations of fascism.
Zebbler uses George Washington, ubiquitous symbol of both American exceptionalism and hard American currency, and either supposes that this symbol has been given a tab of acid, or wonders what would happen if it one day is. In both cases, things are getting weird. The serious and strong foundation of the country’s ideals, well they might begin to stretch and wiggle and stop taking themselves so seriously. And what happens then? George Washington raises his eyebrows in exultation. American exceptionalism reduced to comedy. I’m adept at neither economics nor geopolitics, and I don’t claim to know Zebbler’s mind, but one could conceivably claim that there is a commentary here on America’s standing in the world, its possible reduction from a grandiose and redoubtable concept to something wonky and strange and even overtly experimental. I suppose that makes sense if we view Washington’s acid trip as something overarchingly negative, focusing on the acid trip as a symbol. But if we see it as an invitation, like we’ve given these underlying American concepts a tab of acid and allowed them a bit more freedom to explore themselves, a bit more creativity, then look at what wonderful things appear: even the 1st president himself appears to have fun, smiling and sticking his tongue out, a far cry from the classically imposing image we mostly know him by.
Reduce the American dollar’s sacred quality by even a bit, give it a little space in which to play, and Zebbler seems to be suggesting that this signals either a complete disintegration of America’s place on a world stage, or that we should be anticipating the coming creativity. Take off those shoes and sit down a while, let’s get a little weird and see what happens.