it was all going on all at once

"We [poster artists] were young and swimming in the same socio-political milieu that produced the rock bands, the drug culture & the sexual revolution. All this was going on in a very small part of the world, and it was all going on all at once."

so continues david goines: "The most important poster event of the ‘60s, was a 1965 show of Jugendstil posters at the University of California Art Museum, organized and curated by Herschel Chipp.

"This exhibition was seen by all of the people in San Francisco who were doing posters for the rock ‘n’ roll events of the time, and the very next posters were all but direct imitations of those of the Jugendstil, particularly reflecting the lettering of Ferdinand Andrei (President of the Vienna Secession 1905), and Leopold Forstner of the Wiener Werkstätte, which you will recall as letters all made to fit into a square, or some other shape, and almost illegible."

every one of the earlier posters shown here (and most of them here) were at that exhibition.

more from david goines: "Some of the poster producers were: Berkeley Buonaparte, The Print Mint, The Family Dog, The Food, and Bill Graham. Important designers of that time were: Stanley Mouse and Kelly, of Mouse Studios, Wes Wilson, Victor Moscoso, David Singer, Rick Griffin and Bob Fried.

"More than anything else, the psychedelic poster era, brief as it was, created an audience for posters that had not existed since the turn of the century. The psychedelic and rock poster was not an art reproduction of a poster about a far away event, as was the then-ubiquitous Spanish bullfight poster. They were real advertisements for real events of immediate interest. The posters had a commemorative value as well as being something neat to put on the wall.

"The general acceptance and enthusiasm that greeted the poster designers of the late 60s and early 70s can be attributed to the Fillmore and Avalon posters that preceded them."

when seen in context with what had been going on around the world, the mucha exhibition in london in 1963 and the beardsley in 1966, the influence became vast and intoxicating.

perhaps direct correspondences are harder to find here than in a previous post, but the worm in the bottle is obvious; with squiggley lines, and blowing hair, and the mad swirls of toorop and the decorative elements, the liberties taken with reality, and the general breaking up of our very air, the artists of the secession were in much the same milieu as the stoners 50 years later.

once vision is al- tered, can it ever return?

reference: jugendstil & expressionism in german posters, 1965, herschel b chipp and brenda richardson; regents of the university of california.

inna gadda da vida, baby

i've begun to wonder about the resurgence of interest in art nouveau in the 1960s; there aren't easy answers because, as it turns out, the questions aren't easy!

i had read somewhere that a collector with a huge collection of art nouveau treasures which had become all but worthless arranged for a museum exhibition, thus reviving value in what he owned. but even if i could find that reference again, which i have not, i am beginning to think it's apocryphal anyway: it's a story with as many roots as did the original movement itself, and i hope i can untangle some of them.

to give you an idea of what i mean, let's take rock posters, for a start. seeing them juxtaposed like this with those from 60 years earlier, it's almost hard to tell which are more "psychedelic," but the influence is obvious. but! what do we mean when we say influence? style? lettering? direct theft?

over the next number of posts we'll look at all of these, as well as the many others that arise. as usual, i'm learning as i go along, hoping to assimilate. i have books coming from the library, letters i've written to the artists themselves, etc. and of course rock posters is just the beginning. what about that mucha poster you had on your wall in 1969?

i think this is going to be fun.