Great Artwork While High: Vincent Van Gogh and The Bulldog in Amsterdam

So trippy….

When we here at Weedist started talking about expanding our on-going series on great music, TV, and other entertainment that’s great for when you’re high, it pretty quickly came up to start doing a series on great artwork. Well before recording music or television even existed, visual art was one of the best ways for humans to express something beyond themselves, a quality that I’ve always thought is one of the chief reasons that art exists in the first place.

As soon as the idea was floated, I thought about the perfect anecdote to turn into a story for Weedist, involving a younger version of myself on a trip made with some friends to the undisputed Weedist capital of the world (though now with some serious international competition), Amsterdam.

I’ll start off by saying that the weekend I spent in Amsterdam was chock full of amazing things because it is such a great city for so many different reasons…and, O yeah, by the way, lots of things are legal that just aren’t in many other places. We started our first full day in Amsterdam at the Bulldog café, one of those world renowned places that tourists flock to in droves.

We got a hash muffin, which was both delicious and clearly much stronger then I had anticipated; this was well before I spent 40 hours a week working at a dispensary, where I had no concept of how strong activated THC can be. Soon after, we walked over to the Vincent Van Gogh museum, where the great artist’s works are collected from start to finish.

Early on in the exhibit, I was reading about how a 20-something Vinny was unhappy with his current career and started to serious take up painting after jobs working for art dealers and then some time as a priest. Maybe it was the idea that a great artist could just suddenly be hit with inspiration like that, but it was around this time that I started to seriously. trip… out…….

I immediately went to the gift shop, where I got the cheapest sketchpad and pencil I could, because I just had the overall urge to just draw. I had to sit down and get some water, as the THC was having its way with every normal function. I recovered and continued though the museum and the rest of the day and weekend, but for the rest of the trip (and for at least a few months following it) I kept the notebook on me, sketching when I was bored instead of playing with my phone or daydreaming.

just incredible….

I was incredibly struck by how Van Gogh was able to produce such a staggering amount of art in only about 10 years. He didn’t seriously start painting until he mid-20s, and was dead by 37. Just like how The Beatles were only around for less then a decade, Van Gogh was an immensely brilliant artist who was incredibly prolific for a short period of time.

Van Gogh’s use of color and perspective, combined with the variation of thick and thin brush strokes beat “psychedelic” artists to it by a few centuries, and it is especially apparent when you see some of his works side by side, since his development was so obvious. Here’s a great example:

Van Gogh’s Shoes from 1886

and a second take a few years later….

These two were painted within a year or so of each other. The latter is the start of the truly “trippy” stuff that Van Gogh has since become so legendary for.

So far ahead of his time, Vincent Van Gogh was a brilliant artist whose works continue to astound people in all frames of mind and sobriety. If you ever get to Amsterdam, try hard not to be too distracted by the legal coffee shops and do yourself a favor and check out this amazing museum. 

Check out other posts from Weedist’s Great Artwork While High series