http://www.snowmasssun.com/article/20090522/FRONTPAGE/905229997/1064%26ParentProfile=1039
May 22, 2009
By Robert Weller
An Animals' song was going through my head as I entered the Denver
Art Museum to see its large collection of psychedelic music posters.
(Check it out at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmIy7Ch4M84
"Strobe lights beam create dreams
walls move minds do too
on a warm San Franciscan night
old child young child feel all right
on a warm San Franciscan night
angels sing leather wings
jeans of blue Harley Davidsons too
on a warm San Franciscan night
old angels young angels feel all right
on a warm San Franciscan night."
"I wasn't born there perhaps I'll die there
there's no place left to go...
Adding to the atmosphere were photos of Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh
standing under a Haight/Asbury sign. The exhibition, called The
Psychedelic Experience: Rock Posters From The San Francisco Bay Area,
1965-71 runs until July 19.
I had been in the city by the Bay in 1968, officially working on the
presidential campaign of Bobby Kennedy. I was 21 years old, a senior
in college, and never had seen anything like it. Nobody had. Few have
seen anything like the Star Wars-Pyramid-like new wing of the Denver
museum, designed by Daniel Libeskind.
I remember a cacophony of noise in San Francisco. Street dances
called the Mime Troupe, sometimes held to raise money to get
musicians out of jail.
My bosses took me to a topless bar. I think it was called "The Ore
House." I remember hearing Otis Redding's voice singing "Your love
lifts me higher than I have ever been lifted before."
Sex was everywhere. Freud's wildest theories about sex, even those he
had rejected, would have been confirmed.
Pressure for a new style of poster had been building up as drug use
increased and opposition to the Vietnam War increased.
It wasn't the first time that drugs had influenced art by any means.
The Roman poet Ovid incorporated them into his work, and like some
that followed him ended up in exile.
Absinthe, the green fairy, was the elixir used by painters and
writers including Vincent Van Gogh, Toulouse Lautrec, Oscar Wilde and
Edgar Degas.
As good as the posters displayed now are, it seemed to me that every
time I heard The Doors, Jimi Hendrix or someone like that my
attention was distracted from the posters. Make of that what you will.
I have a friend, like me with more than 35 years as a mainstream
journalist behind her, and we have both asked each other what
happened after all this love in 1968? The war went on, and on.
Wes Wilson was working at a small printing press company after
attending San Francisco State University, when he began developing
psychedelic posters, including anti-war designs, and got the trend going.
His career took off when he went to work for the Avalon Ballroom and
Bill Graham's Fillmore Auditorium.
Strobe lights and liquid light shows led to new designs. The late
Jerry Garcia, of the Grateful Dead, often would turn his back to the
audience to watch the lights, a museum board says. Visitors can make
their own posters and do their own light shows.
The museum's AIGA Associate Curator of Graphic Design, Darrin
Alfred,formerly on the curatorial staff at MOMA in San Francisco, led
the development of the exhibition, selecting about 300 posters from
nearly 900, hanging them in salon style.
He selected the works of Wes Wilson, Bonnie MacLean, Alton Kelley and
Stanley Mouse, Victor Moscoso, Rick Griffin, Lee Conklin and David
Singer and several other artists of the period. Experts say Conklin's
work was the boldest in expressing the psychedelic experience.
Moscoso, who studied under color theorist Josef Albers, created
posters that seemed to move as a result of the moving lights.
"Incredible Poetry, which seems to make lips open and close.
A quote from a guitarist in the Charlatans, one of the startup bands
that got it rolling, Richard Olsen, "we were all so zonked that we
weren't even playing together."
Author Ken Kesey, from La Junta, organized parties called "Acid
Tests" in the city after volunteering to take part in CIA studies of the drug.
To bring some of the rest of the era to visitors, a room has been set
up with memorabilia. "We wanted to give people a taste of everything
– love, peace, the anti-war movement," said Lindsey Housel, museum
manager of adult and collect programs.
A coffee table was set up to let people put their feet up and share
the atmosphere, which included patchouli. An issue of Life magazine
led with "The Draft, Who Beats It And How." The famous poster of Che
Guevera was on one wall.
Several Rolodex-like devices were set up for people to post comments.
One note, unsigned, was that just like the '60s we are in a war we
don't want. The anti-war sentiment hadn't reached its peak yet though
many protest marches had been held. Kent State was still to come.
A couple of old-fashioned telephones let you dial into YouTube to see
a video of stars of the time, including Jimi Hendrix playing his
guitar with his teeth. I can remember him burning a guitar and
smashing it, as well as delivering an unforgettable performance of
the Star Spangled Banner.
Movies about rock posters will soon be making their debuts, including
"American Artifact: The Rise of American Rock Poster Art."
--
Robert Weller covered stories around the nation and the world for
Associated Press for more than 35 years.
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