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175.
The Schizophrenic Bomb: Synthetic Psychoses - An Artifice for Armageddon.
NY: Uranian Press, 1962. Broadside (22.8x30.7cm.). Printed in black on off-white paper. Embossed seal of the Uranian Press and rubber stamp of the Uranian Tract Society to lower margin. Illustrated.
Text reads “Lysergic acid diethylamide or LSD-25, is the ‘artificial insanity’ of the Chemical Warfare Div! One lb. of this oderless, invisible, incapacitating agt. could psycho N.Y.C.’s 8000000 souls if put into drinking water reservoirs, sprayed in aerosol mists, or in chemical-missile-warheads”; followed by a quote from Major General Stubbs (‘Chief Army Chem. Off’) on the military potential of “Psychochemicals”.
The Uranian Press was founded by graphic artist Richard Oviet Tyler and painter, sculptor and filmmaker Dorothea Baer in 1958 in the Lower East Side, where they helped establish the Judson Gallery. At the same time, they established The Uranian Phalanstery and First New York Gnostic Lyceum Temple, for which the the Uranian Press produced numerous publications, mainly chapbooks and broadsides, which Tyler sold from his pushcart in the yard of the Judson Memorial Church.
The Phalanstery combined Buddhist principles, Jungian and Gnostic ideas, astrology and alchemy, and with Tyler as Minister its collective of artist-disciples (‘agents’) sought enlightenment and individual transcendence through communal meditation and creative practice, often with the help of LSD.
Tyler’s woodcut illustration, captioned “Schizogenesis de Profundis”, depicts mass terror and images of death, reflecting his personal experience of Japan’s devastation at the end of the war and the contemporary fear of nuclear apocalypse (the Cuban Missile Crisis developed during October 1962). In Spring 1964 it appeared on the cover of the New York anarcho-syndicalist magazine Views & Comments of the Libertarian League (the issue also featured a contribution from Jonathan Leake, future New York Provo and founder of the Resurgence Youth Movement).
Somewhat creased, worn and edge-torn, but scarce in any condition.
