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All figures. Psychedlic Poster Art: Victor Moscoso Transpersonal Spirit
ictor Moscoso is known as the legend classically trained artist who applied an academic perspective to the psychedelic era. He was born in Galicia, Spain, in 1936, and emigrated with his family to Brooklyn when he was three. Moscoso studied at Yale with Joseph Albers, whose theories on use of colour were a major influence in Moscoso’s later work. In 1959 Moscoso had migrated west to the San Francisco Art Institute where he would receive his MFA and eventually teach lithography. (Family Dog). The year of his arrival in San Francisco, America had become engaged in a war that was the catalyst to a cultural revolution and a shift in the thinking and understanding of America as a world power around the world. A war that questioned the American Dream, a war that brought together a generation and divided a nation (Grafik). By the fall of 1966, he was one of the first artists to recognize the powerful impact and enduring legacy that the art of that era would generate (Family Dog). His unique creations employed wildly intricate typography that is virtually illegible and were famous for alternating deeply saturated colours, that when viewed together created a vibrating effect (Family Dog). The posters turned traditional colour theory upside down as Moscoso used his training in colour and did the opposite of what he was taught.
•That’s what we were known as, me, Griffin, Mouse, Kelley, we were the poster guys. There was no other way of communicating about these dance events. No radio, no television, this was the only way. (Grafik Magazine)
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Thus creating evocative, vivid, erotic, patterned posters designed for the newly emerged psychedelic culture of San Francisco in the late 1960’s. Moscoso utilised hand-made font, photo collage and op art to create a new aesthetic portraying psychedelic consciousness. These “slow read” posters, had the effect of text being almost incomprehensible unless time was taken to stare into the image and decipher the dazzling effects of the contrasting colours and intense patterns (Psychedelic Poster Art). Moscoso, Rick Griffin, Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley and Wes Wilson were the Big Five of what is now called the psychedelic art movement, producing posters for music venues the Fillmore Auditorium and the Avalon Ballroom for the Family Dog collective. At these venues they had improvisational rock music and elaborate lightshows with coloured projections and strobe lights (Grafik). The posters colours would appear and disappear as the various coloured lights shone upon their surface adding to their dynamic and psychedelic aesthetic. (Psychedelic Poster Art). From 1966 to 1969, these five ruled. Their works lined the streets, advertising gigs by the Grateful Dead, The Doors and Jefferson Airplane, among countless other legendary performers of the time. Their work was picked up around the world and became the trademark graphic depiction for the music and counterculture of a time (Grafik). 147 numbered posters commemorating Family Dog produced shows at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco from 1966-1968. These ground-breaking designs helped elevate the rock poster into the “fine art” realm (The Vintage Poster). He created works which are classic examples of the peak of psychedelic poster art and commercial graphic design, and broke the rules and created a visual reference, which juxtaposed psychedelic art from the traditional arts of the past (Psychedelic Poster Art). In 1968, Moscoso, Griffin, and S. Clay Wilson joined Robert Crumb on the third issue of Zap Comix. When Crumb founded the magazine, it was one of a kind, and its seven contributors produced stories so inventive that comics would never be the same. Moscoso’s work for Zap is formally innovative as well; many stories are told by way of nonlinear, surrealist dreamscapes in which the imagery morphs and folds back onto itself. Moscoso also created three wraparound covers for the magazine, the most prominent being issue number four - an eye-bending, flamboyantly vulgar transformation of a dancing Mr. Peanut into a dancing phallus. It is a sensational example of graphic art that, as Gary Panter has put it, “will represent the twentiethcentury imagination for centuries” (Only the Dreamer).