The Many Lives of Psychedelic Artist Steve Marcus

Lower East Side illustrator Steve Marcus was assistant art director at Screw magazine in the ’90s. These days, he has an exhibit at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in Manhattan called Psychedelicatessen: A Powerful Dose of Art by Steve Marcus.

“I sold my first thing at 19 years old to Al Goldstein at Screw for $25 in 1989,” he recalls. “There’s a huge Screw alumni that is incredible. Robert Crumb did covers. Spain Rodriguez did covers.”

Marcus, 57, is also an alumnus of High Times, where he drew Cannabis Cup posters and various other pieces for the venerable marijuana publication over the years. His main artistic influences growing up were “Bugs Bunny and the Looney Tunes, Mad magazine, Cracked, National Lampoon, The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and Robert Crumb.

“I was into punk rock and the Grateful Dead, like hippie pothead culture and the graffiti hip-hop thing. That was an awesome time to be living in New York City in the ’80s and ’90s. It had everything happening, and at the very beginning of that, there was still alternative culture, which wasn’t mainstream.” he says.

Marcus has gone somewhat mainstream with his current show that’s in the same building that housed the extraordinary Anne Frank: The Exhibition in 2025-26. According to the Times of Israel, it’s based on “Marcus’ youthful psychedelic bent and midlife turn toward Jewish observance.”

After his father’s heart-attack death in 2009 when Steve was 40, he became “more connected” with his roots and culture. “About four years into learning more and more on a daily basis, I started to want to make contemporary Jewish art,” he says. As Marcus calls it: “Kosher Pop Art.”

He took all of his experiences, whether cannabis, hip-hop, graffiti or punk rock, and started to apply them to Jewish themes. But because contemporary Jewish art didn’t even exist at the time, he had to look around for a gallery or museum that would be interested in this “obviously super hippie, psychedelic-inspired thing” that became Psychedelicatessen.

Marcus met YIVO’s director of exhibitions Eddy Portnoy when he was organizing Am Yisrael High: The Story of Jews and Cannabis in 2022. Marcus did the poster for the show. This led to Psychedelicatessen, which features 30 of Marcus’ works. Many are jokey juxtapositions of well-known pieces, like “Schmaltz is not healthy for children and other living things,” with the flower and motto that originally read “War” instead of “Schmaltz,” which is Yiddish for chicken fat. Or “Make Bagels Not War.” Or “Just Passing Thru,” which converts Crumb’s “Keep on Truckin’” man into a rabbi. There’s also “The Grateful Reb,” “Terrapin Hora,” “Soup of the Day” (mushroom) and “Flour Power” (loaves of bread). Another section of the gallery is devoted to his blotter art, dubbed “Rabbinic Trips.”

“The exhibit is very popular and is doing quite well,” Portnoy tells The Other. “People of all sorts come and see it, but the main appeal is to those connected to 1960s-’70s era drug culture. Those people love it and are particularly thrilled to see such unusual takes on that era’s art and culture. Many Jewish viewers are also especially pleased with the exhibit, explaining how nice it is to see such joy, humor and explosions of color in a time when they could really use some joy.”

With his long grey beard, Marcus looks the part of a rabbi. He discourses on Judaism and history if you let him. As we wind down our interview in his walk-up apartment on E. Houston St. over a joint, Marcus notes that while the show is a success, it has resulted in some flak directed at him during this period of conflict in the Middle East.

“Unfortunately, right now, being publicly Jewish, you receive some hate mail and stuff like that,” he confides. “My grandmother used to say, ‘Love me or hate me, but don’t be indifferent.’ So, nobody’s indifferent about it. There are a handful of people that have sent me unpleasant comments. Well, the show has zero politics. Zero. So that’s what makes it even more disconcerting.”

If anything, it’s a humorous merging of Jewish sensibility and pop art. Marcus’ colorful style and Cubist leanings make for fun viewing.

“I know a lot of artists are heavily invested in the polarization and the weaponization of art, using it as propaganda to divide people and things of this nature,” he points out. “It’s great that people express themselves politically. Whether it’s comedians or musicians or visual artists, I like when we allow you to think about it this way, if you so choose, and if you want to deal with it at the most superficial level of looking at art, or joke, or whatever it is, without reading into it or going any deeper. You could just say that ‘I like it, I just enjoy it.’”

While Psychedelicatessen runs through 2026, people can also enjoy Marcus’ American Chutzpah exhibit at the Vilna Shul in Boston. His unique art is also being sold as souvenirs at Boston’s Freedom Trail, which is run by the National Park Service. “I’m a history buff, so I think it’s super cool,” he says. Next year Marcus expects to be exhibiting new works in South Africa.

In his apartment, he bemoans the current state of marijuana legalization. “It’s good that there are fewer people in prison for weed,” Marcus says between tokes. “At the same time, I know people in Humboldt and Mendocino counties whose lives have been compromised. There are a lot of people that legalization did not help. It actually hurt. They have not been able to reap the rewards of the legalization.”

Like many, he has friends that went to prison for double-digit years without reparations from the state that imprisoned them for all that time. While states instilled huge taxation on these products, numerous people paid the price for its accessibility.

“I hoped marijuana would be different, but it’s more of the same capitalism in America. Same story. Sold and consolidated.”

Flashing back to the pre-legalization era, Marcus tugs at his beard as he gripes about modernisation. “We had this common activity, or business that people shared with one another. Whereas now I feel like that’s all gone. There’s no risk, no standing at a pay phone waiting for somebody to call, no adventure.”

In the end, Marcus reminds us how progress comes at a price. “I’m the last of the free-range generation,” he says. “I was able to wander about, no phones. If I didn’t show up, people wondered where I was. There was no way to know. And now we just don’t live in that world… Not all progress is good.”