Realizing Dreams Unreal

Psychedelic posters represent the art and artists of 1960s counterculture.

THE RISE OF THE TEENAGER. The birth of the hippie. Changing times. The 1960s and ‘70s meant experimentation, love, war, music, and death—all themes represented in Dreams Unreal: The Genesis of the Psychedelic Rock Poster. Curated by Titus O’Brien, the exhibition and accompanying book, published by the University of New Mexico Press, explores the development of an art form that hinged on life in San Francisco from 1965 to 1970.

The exhibition features more than 150 psychedelic posters, handbills, and postcards while the nearly 400-page book includes 50 illustrations and photographs, as well as 200 full-color plates. Much of the work in the exhibition comes from Dr. James Gunn, a private collector who lives in Truth or Consequences and recently donated the posters to the Museum. Gunn was attending UC Berkeley Medical School in the late 1960s, when someone handed him a concert handbill. Prior to medical school, Gunn had studied art and the handbill’s style intrigued him. This was the genesis of his collection, and although he lost many of the first handbills he collected, he found a store selling psychedelic concert posters and bought nearly 300 of them. Gunn moved from Berkeley to Gallup and then to T or C, and the posters languished in storage. Gunn approached the Albuquerque Museum, hoping to donate the collection. “I wanted them to have a good home,” he says.

O’Brien learned that Gunn had virtually all the necessary artifacts to tell the story of the art, and of the era itself. “The ‘60s have left us with some difficult legacies,” says O’Brien. “Most accounts of the period and this material come more from a ‘fan’ perspective; hippies are often quite proud and idealistic about the era, and treatments of the period have tended to reflect that. The poster art, in particular, gives a unique, sideways perspective on it.”

Poster artists were typically a bit older than hippies and often skeptical of the counterculture to which they became integral. Indeed, many of the poster artists didn’t even enjoy the music, O’Brien says. As such, he curated the exhibition with a distinctive approach—focusing on the artists and elevating the art to “museum level,” rather than emphasizing the psychedelia aesthetic. Artists featured include Wes Wilson, considered the first psychedelic poster artist, who would, in 1966, pioneer what became a ubiquitous, liquefied lava-lamp style, rapidly moving on to create some of the most innovative and difficult-to-decipher fonts. Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelly, whose refined lettering and reverse-type graphics defined the look of the Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and Quicksilver Messenger Service among others. Mouse created the famous “Zig Zag” poster, which was based on rolling

ON VIEW

JANUARY 11-APRIL 12, 2020

Dreams Unreal: Genesis of the Psychedelic Poster

Rick Griffin, “Aoxomoxoa”: Grateful Dead, Sons of Champlin, Initial Shock; Avalon, Jan. 24-26, 1969, offset lithograph on paper, Albuquerque Museum, gift of Dr. James Gunn

paper packaging. Also included is Rick Griffin’s poster for the Human Be-In, which would lead into the 1967 Summer of Love. Griffin and Victor Moscoso created “fonts” that looked like writing but were not actual letters. The illegibility of the posters was part of their appeal.

Half a century later, the poster designs remain groundbreaking, and O’Brien hopes they will amaze and inspire a younger and broader audience. “I really focused on the individual artists, and what it was they were doing in the posters themselves. The book and exhibition are designed to be uncluttered and modern, not attempting to recreate or match the experiential cacophony of the era,” says O’Brien.

Rick Griffin, FDD18: Doors; Denver Dog, Dec. 29-31, 1967, offset lithograph on paper. Albuquerque Museum, gift of Dr.James Gunn

The Denver Art Museum holds the most comprehensive collection of psychedelic posters in the world. However, with the accession of Gunn’s collection, the Albuquerque Museum has become a significant repository for the genre, says O’Brien. “[Dr. Gunn’s] collection has inspired the Museum to acquire some other posters and artifacts like a Jimi Hendrix shirt and poster,” says O’Brien. “New Mexico was very important in the ’60s counterculture, and the Museum is now much better poised to tell some of these stories.”