The Big Five: Poster Art Pioneers of the Psychedelic 60's by rishabhkiran0102

Rishabh Kiran

Poster Art Pioneers of the Psychedelic 60’s

SPECIAL THANKS TO Prof. Rupesh Gajbhiye Prof. Shreya Jhakar

The Big Five Poster Art Pioneers of the Psychedelic 60’s

Rishabh Kiran

WHAT’S IN THE BOOK?

ABOUT THE MOVEMENT

“IN THE ‘60S, WE USED TO THINK OF UTOPIA AS SOMETHING THAT WAS REALLY GOING TO HAPPEN”

9 13 21

Wesley Wilson What’s in the Postah? Melting Letterforms & Spatial Prowess

“I WAS MAKING THE LETTERING LEGIBLE.”

29 33 41

Victor Moscoso What’s in the Postah? Retinal Burning Colours & Infinite Frames.

“THE BIRTH OF AN IDEA.”

49 53 59

Rick Griffin What’s in the Postah? Boisterous, Blazing & Breathtaking

‘IS THAT THE GRATEFUL DEAD OR IS THAT THE GRATEFUL DEAD? THAT’S GOT GRATEFUL DEAD WRITTEN ALL OVER IT.”

67 69 71 79

Stanley Miller Alton Kelley What’s in the Postah? Inspired Iconography Through Art Nouveau Revivals

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The “Big Five: Poster Art Pioneers of the Psychedelic 60’s” is a visual biography of the famed big five poster artists Wes Wilson, Rick Griffin, Victor Moscoso and the duo Alton Kelley and Stanley Mouse. The book covers aspects of their life outside of their poster art practice while also documenting and highlighting some of their iconic works that acts as a graphic identity of the 60’s through playful renditions of the their titled artworks, lesser-known trivia about their works for various bands, and personal commentary on their observed practices, visual styles and personalities. Choosing this as the topic for my book was an instantaneous decision. While browsing through the internet one fine day for vibrant colour schemes for a personal project of mine, I stumbled upon the glorious artwork of Wes wilson titled “BG-51”, done for a show at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco featuring the Otis Rush and Grateful Dead. The melting letterforms, tight compositional techniques and the perfect marriage of hallucinogenic illustrations with warped type drew me to the poster. I began reading up on Wes Wilson and his body of work and soon stumbled upon the work of the rest of the Big Five. I was astonished to find the degree of variety in the works of each of the artists and their willingness to break the norms of design conformity that had taken over the world. As Victor Moscoso, the only artist of the big five to have academic training in design said “I was trying to make the lettering legible. I was trying to get the message across quickly and simply. Because I was such a good student and learned the rules of good poster making, I was doing all the wrong things.” Being an avid type nerd, the creation of this book introduced me to the marvellous world of psychedelic type inspired by Art Nouveau aesthetics and further strengthened my obsession with letterforms and their versatility. It opened my eyes to a period in modern history and culture that was short lived, but whose influence in the world of art and culture remains strong to this day.

INTRODUCTION

The counterculture of the 1960s was an anti-establishment cultural phenomenon that developed throughout much of the Western world between the mid-1960s and the mid-1970s. The aggregate movement gained momentum as the U.S. Civil Rights Movement continued to grow, and, with the expansion of the American Government’s extensive military intervention in Vietnam, would later become revolutionary to some. As the 1960s progressed, widespread social tensions also developed concerning other issues, and tended to flow along generational lines regarding human sexuality, women’s rights, traditional modes of authority, experimentation with psychoactive drugs, and differing interpretations of the American Dream. Many key movements related to these issues were born or advanced within the counterculture of the 1960s. As the era unfolded, what emerged were new cultural forms and a dynamic subculture that celebrated experimentation, modern incarnations of Bohemianism, and the rise of the hippie and other alternative lifestyles. This embrace of creativity is particularly notable in the works of musical acts and graphic arts such as the Beatles and Bob Dylan, the posters of the Big Five, as well as of New Hollywood filmmakers, whose works became far less restricted by censorship. Within and across many disciplines, many other creative artists, authors, and thinkers helped define the counterculture movement. Everyday fashion experienced a decline of the suit and especially of the wearing of hats; styles based around jeans, for both men and women, became an important fashion movement that has continued up to the present day. The 1960’s counterculture movement was also the birthplace for a unique art form, one characterised by the use of psychoactive drugs by its users and the artists striving to mimick hallucinogenic visuals seen under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs. The poster art of the 60’s serves as a unique memorabilia to the counterculture period, with the art and their artists symbolic of the rebellious nature that engulfed the minds and bodies of those associated with the movement. 5

ABOUT THE MOVEMENT

in printing, with Bob Carr, who had formed, in his basement, the small firm Contact Printing. Carr was in touch with the whole San Francisco beat poetry and jazz scene, which was now in the process of transforming itself. Wilson, who had become Carr’s assistant and partner, was doing the basic layout design for most of the work. The press also did handbills for the San Francisco Mime Troupe fundraising benefits, the so-called ‘Appeal’ parties, as well as for the Merry Prankster Acid Tests. The Mime Troupe and the Acid Tests were linked to the emerging dance-hall scene through this series of benefit concerts, so it is no surprise that the new dance venues, like the Avalon Ballroom and Fillmore Auditorium, soon found their way to Contact Printing. Wilson designed the handbill for the first Trips Festival, now considered one of the seed events marking the advent of the emerging San Francisco scene. Graphic artist Wes Wilson pioneered the rock concert poster aesthetic of the late ‘60s, translating the sights and sounds of San Francisco’s counterculture society into the psychedelic iconography that endures today among the era’s most indelible images. Put another way, Wes Wilson single-handedly pioneered what is now known as the psychedelic poster that defined the 60’s counterculture.

Before long, Wilson was doing the posters for promoter Chet Helms — his shows at the Open Theater. It was Wilson who designed the original logo for the Family Dog. Helms went on to use him as the primary artist for Family Dog at the Avalon Ballroom. Soon he was doing that, plus posters for Bill Graham and the Fillmore Auditorium. After several months, Wilson stopped producing for the Family Dog venue and Wilson grew up without the special interest concentrated almost exclusively on posters for in art that is typical of most of his contemporary Bill Graham and the Fillmore events. He cites poster artists. Instead, he was more interested in that with Chet Helms and the Avalon Ballroom, nature and the outdoors, studying forestry and he was often given a theme around which he was horticulture at a small junior college in Auburn, asked to improvise, while with Bill Graham and California. He attended San Francisco State, but the Fillmore, he was given complete freedom to dropped out in 1963, where his major, at that design whatever he wanted. time, had become philosophy. Wilson is also reported to have been inspired Wilson’s first poster was self published. Done by Alphonse Mucha, Van Gogh, Gustav Klimt, in 1965, it has been nicknamed the “Are We and Egon Schiele. Somewhere around this time, Next?” poster. It notoriously features a swastika a friend showed him a copy of a 1908 poster within an American flag motif, a protest by done by the Viennese Secessionist artist, Alfred Wilson to the ever-increasing U.S. involvement in Roller. It contained an alphabet and lettering the Vietnam War. It is a clear example of Wilson’s style quite similar to what Wilson had been doing politics, and his willingness to speak out and be and marked a direction toward which he aspired. counted continues to this very day. It was not long before Wilson absorbed the Roller style, altering it to his own needs. What followed was an explosion of lettering creativity Wilson’s introduction to the Bay Area scene that changed the poster scene permanently. is an example of serendipity at its finest. The time was late 1965 and early 1966, and the whole Wes Wilson single-handedly pioneered what San Francisco alternative culture scene was just is now known as the psychedelic poster. His emerging. We then bring together Wes Wilson, style of filling all available space with lettering, of who had a natural talent for art and an interest creating fluid forms made from letters, and using

WES WILSON

Wes Wilson single-handedly pioneered what is now known as the psychedelic poster. His style of filling all available space with lettering, of creating fluid forms made from letters, and using flowing letters to create shapes became the standard that most psychedelic artists followed. It helped put the “psychedelic” in the art. The first clear example of this, and a key piece in Wilson’s history, was the poster BG-18, done for a show with the Association at the Fillmore Auditorium. Set in a background of green is a swirling flame-form of red letters. With this poster came a new concept in the art of that time, perhaps the first true ‘psychedelic poster.’ Darrin Alfred, curator of architecture and design at the Denver Art Museum, who curated a 2009 exhibition there called “The Psychedelic Experience,” which included Mr. Wilson’s work, recounted a conversation between the artist and Mr. Graham about one of his first posters. “Well, it’s nice, but I can’t read it,” Mr. Graham is said to have remarked. “Yeah,” Mr. Wilson responded, “and that’s why people are gonna stop and look at it.” That arcane quality, Mr. Chantry said, also served as a sort of rite of membership. “The point of psychedelia was that nobody could read it — unless you were part of the ‘tribe,’” he wrote. “It was a type of marketing that was trying to (literally) scare away the ‘straights’ (or at least make the secret world illegible to them).”

But, by mid 1967, there were any number of good artists, many of whom had cut their teeth on Wilson’s lettering and style. A disagreement with Bill Graham about what had been agreed to, as far as payment, led to Wilson resigning his tenure as the primary Fillmore poster artist. Fairness to him in these matters was a matter of principle. Wilson did his last poster for Bill Graham in May of 1967, although he continued to produce posters for a number of other venues, including several more for the Avalon Ballroom. In 1968, Wilson was surprised to learn that he was to receive a $5000 award by the National Endowment for the Arts for “his contributions to American Art.” In fact, Wilson, who was considered a leader, if not the “key” artist, of the psychedelic poster scene, was also profiled in such major magazines as Life, Time, and Variety magazines. Wilson also created a new technique in enameling glass as art and developed a watercolor style, which was well received at his one-man show in San Francisco in 1973. Then, in 1976, Wilson relocated his family to a cattle farm in the Missouri Ozarks.

With the publication of the, now classic, poster book, “The Art of Rock ,” Wilson was invited, in 1989, to exhibit his classic poster work at the Springfield Art Museum. The success of the resulting show, “Looking Back: Rock Posters of the 1960s by Wes Wilson,” rekindled Wilson’s interest in the poster scene and he went on to create and publish “Off The Wall™,” an inThen, in late 1966, Wilson created a poster depth journal on poster art and contemporary for the Winterland venue that has been ideas. The nine issues of this, now out-of-print, nicknamed “The Sound.” It combines two aspects publication are eagerly sought after by poster of Wilson’s style that are unmistakable: his ability enthusiasts. Wilson was also the executive to fill all available space with vibrant, flowing producer of three Rock Art Expos — large poster letters (mentioned above) and his admiration and conventions on the West Coast. Over the years, respect for the feminine form. In fact, this is one Wilson has also been featured in a number of a handful of posters from that era that are of gallery exhibits, both his classic and his considered representative of the entire period. contemporary works. In this writer’s opinion, Wilson’s treatment of women and the feminine form is one of his most While the name Wes Wilson is synonymous lasting contributions to the poster art of the with psychedelic poster art, during the later sixties. Not deliberately erotic, his nudes never years of his life living in the Ozarks, he created skirt pornography. Instead, his admiration and numerous watercolour paintings, choosing to appreciation for the feminine form and all that it focus on his now famous feminine forms while represents is clear. Wilson’s nudes are definitive also working on occasional poster projects that of the period. came his way and piqued his interest. In summary, it is safe to say that the psychedelic poster, as we have come to know it, was defined by Wes Wilson sometime in the summer of 1966. Wilson pretty much reigned supreme among the poster artists at that time.

He died of cancer at his home in Leann, Missouri on January 24, 2020 at the age of 82.

WES WILSON

This Wes Wilson design is simple yet elegant, combining a beautiful portrait of an Egyptian-woman along with the trademark Wilson lettering along the right side. Captain Beefheart was one of modern music’s true innovators who employed idiosyncratic rhythms, absurdist lyrics, free jazz, Delta blues, latter-day classical music and rock & roll to create a singular body of work notable for its daring and fluid creativity. While he never had mainstream success, Beefheart’s fingerprints were to be seen all over punk, New Wave and post-rock. In their original incarnation, Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band were a blues-rock outfit which became staples of the teen-dance circuit; they quickly signed to A&M Records, where the success of the single “Diddy Wah Diddy” earned them the opportunity to record a full-length album, Safe as Milk, released in 1967.

WES WILSON

Wes Wilson’s style of filling all available space with lettering, of creating fluid forms made from letters, and using flowing letters to create shapes became the standard that most psychedelic artists followed. It helped put the “psychedelic” in the art. The first clear example of this, and a key piece in Wilson’s history, was the poster BG-18, done for a show with the Association at the Fillmore Auditorium (who were riding with the hit song, “Along Comes Mary,” referred to in the poster). Set in a background of green is a swirling flame-form of red letters. The incredible lettering of the BG18 is widely considered to be the pinnacle of Wes Wilson’s achievement in the genre he invented. While Wilson designed 17 of the first 18 Bill Graham posters, Wilson himself considers this to be the first true ‘psychedelic poster.’ The thin white outlines on the flame lettering was actually an error during the printing process, noticed much later by Wes Wilson.

WES WILSON

This classic Wes Wilson and photographer Herb Greene collaboration is the quintessential Jefferson Airplane poster with a terrific use of psychedelic coloring, a great photo of the band and lettering inspired by Vienna secessionist artist Alfred Roller. If you look closely at the background behind the Airplane, you will see some small wall etchings. This iconic wall of hieroglyphics was used as a background for the Surrealistic Pillow cover photography along with many other famous photos of San Francisco musicians in the late 1960s and it was located in Greene’s dining room. One day Greene removed the wallpaper from the room to paint it, but before he had a chance to do that, his roommate drew a bunch of hieroglyphics which went on to be synonymous with the image of San Francisco psychedelic music. WES WILSON

With his ability to let lettering come to life on a static canvas, Wes Wilson gave birth to 60’s visual psychedelia.

Wes Wilson is credited with bringing to life the “psychedelic aesthetic” to poster art during the 1960’s peace movement in San Francisco. His posters are easily identifiable through his heavy reliance on expressive lettering, for which he sought inspiration from the posters and typography practice of Alfred Roller. His posters follow a distinct style of using expressive lettering and illustrations from the Art Nouveau era, with the two visual mediums forming a symbiotic relationship that is a hallmark of his visual style. The general theme of his lettering gracefully following the contours of his central illustration make for interesting and lively compositions. His heavy reliance on block letterforms and their visual movement makes for interesting relationships between positive and negative spaces in his posters. The lack of breathing space in his compositions interestingly does not feel stifling and breathless, in part due to his clever use of colours and the harmonious interactions between his letterforms. An early poster that solidified Wes Wilson’s emerging style was for a show at the Fillmore in July 1966 featuring the Association, Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Grass Roots and Sopwith Camel. The names of the groups appeared in bright red-orange against a green background, the lettering suggesting flames. He used a similar look for the cover of Paul Grushkin’s book “The Art of Rock: Posters From Presley to Punk” (1987), except this time the flaming lettering constituted the hair of a bluecolored figure.

in the art. The first clear example of this, and a key piece in Wilson’s history, was the poster BG-18, done for a show with the Association at the Fillmore Auditorium. Set in a background of green is a swirling flame-form of red letters. With this poster came a new concept in the art of that time, perhaps the first true ‘psychedelic poster.’ Then, in late 1966, Wilson created a poster for the Winterland venue that has been nicknamed “The Sound.” It combines two aspects of Wilson’s style that are unmistakable: his ability to fill all available space with vibrant, flowing letters (mentioned above) and his admiration and respect for the feminine form. In fact, this is one of a handful of posters from that era that are considered representative of the entire period. . . In this writer’s opinion, Wilson’s treatment of women and the feminine form is one of his most lasting contributions to the poster art of the sixties. An overlooked aspect of his poster art practice is his illustrative prowess and harnessing its visual qualities to blend with his lettering and create otherworldly compositions. As all other poster artists of the 60’s, he sought inspiration from Art Nouveau paintings and a recurring theme of his work included feminine figures and anatomies. One of his famous works “The Sound” stands testament to this nuance of his poster art practice.

His style of filling all available space with lettering, of creating fluid forms made from letters, and using flowing letters to create shapes became the standard that most psychedelic artists followed. It helped put the “psychedelic”

WES WILSON

Perhaps because the job called for advertising so many shows, Wes Wilson was able to submerge the headliners behind the simple, mind-blowing summary of the whole trip, calling it, “The Sound.” Wilson, more than the other artists of the time, used the nude feminine form as part of his Art Nouveauinfluenced flowing representations of the psychedelic experience – not to mention evoking the sexual revolution that was unfolding at the same time.

WES WILSON

This poster merges the lettering of Wes Wilson – where you can easily see the Vienna Secessionist influence – and a photo of a young and beardless Jerry Garcia by Herb Greene. Greene was one of the early photographers of the HaightAshbury music scene.

WES WILSON

Victor Moscoso (born July 28, 1936)[1] is a Spanish artist best known for producing psychedelic rock posters, advertisements, and underground comix in San Francisco during the 1960s and 1970s. He was the first of the rock poster artists of the 1960s era with formal academic training and experience. Moscoso was born in the Vilaboa parish of Culleredo, Galicia. He moved with his mother to Oleiros. His father, whose parents had already emigrated to New Jersey, exiliated to the U.S. due to being persecuted by the falange. At the age of four, Moscoso and his mother, joined his father, and travelled to Brooklyn, where he stayed until he was an adult. His father worked as a painter and taught him about color combinations while his mother was a seamstress. After studying art at Cooper Union in New York City and at Yale University, Moscoso moved to San Francisco in 1959. There, he attended the San Francisco Art Institute, where he eventually became an instructor. Moscoso’s interest in psychedelic poster art was sparked when he saw Wes Wilson’s Paul Butterfield poster (FD-3) for the Family Dog. As Moscoso recalls in an interview, “Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelley’s poster for “Zig Zag,” [“Zig Zag Man (FD-14)] influenced me . . . I mean when I saw Mouse and Kelley do “Zig Zag,” it just about knocked me down on the sidewalk . . .” Moscoso became active doing concert posters in the fall of 1966 with work for the Family Dog at the Avalon Ballroom. His Neon Rose posters for The Matrix brought his work international attention in the Summer of Love 1967. Victor Moscoso had gone through a transformation at the onset of the counterculture scene in San Francisco; he had to set aside his academic training and has said, “One of the ways that I did it was by reversing all the rules I ever learned in school . . . For instance, I had been told that lettering should always be legible, so I turned that around to say: Lettering should be as illegible as possible. Another rule was that a poster should transmit its message quickly and simply. So, I said: A poster should hang you up as long as possible. Another one is: Do not use vibrating colors; they’re irritating to the eyes. So I said: Use vibrating colors as much as possible. After all, the musicians were turning up their amplifiers to the point where they were blowing out your eardrums. I did the equivalent with the eyeballs . . .”

VICTOR MOSCOSO

“So I reversed everything that I had learned, and once I did that, then it fell into place. Then everything I’d learned in school began to work for me. I could pick a vibrating color like nobody could . . . It’s not just using colors from the opposite of the color wheel. The intensity has to be equal. The value has to be equal, so that your eye cannot tell which one is in front of the other . . . Your eyes are limited. That’s why you can see motion pictures. Motion pictures don’t move. They’re just a lot of still pictures. However, because of the limitations of our eyes, they appear to move . . .”

Moscoso was the first of San Francisco’s “Big Five” psychedelic poster artists to create his own poster series. He named it Neon Rose. Moscoso had approached the owners of The Matrix (a small San Francisco rock club where bands like The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, and Big Brother & The Holding Company played early in their careers), offering to give the club 200 free posters for each Matrix show if he could print as many others as he could afford, and sell them. They took the deal.

“I didn’t want to be dependent on Bill Graham, Chet Helms, or anybody else at that Moscoso tells about watching people cross point. I said, “Okay, I’ll set up my own company,” the street to look at his posters on telephone and I went to The Matrix because The Matrix poles: “I would just stand out on the street, like was playing The Doors, Big Brother & The outside the Trieste, and I could even stay inside Holding Company—the same groups that were the Trieste and watch people as they passed. at the Avalon Ballroom and at the Fillmore, and One of the reasons I used vibrating colors is I said to the guy at The Matrix ‘How would you because it’s kind of like neon lights flashing. The guys like to have me do some posters for you? other thing that catches your eye is contrast. Already, I’ve been doing posters at the Avalon. Stop: Black and yellow. But you can read that They already were good.’ And they said, “Sure, from across the sidewalk and continue. The neon we’d love it, but we don’t have the money. We . . . the vibrating colors will catch your attention can’t afford it.” I said, “No problem. I will give you and then “what’s going on?” brings you over. 200 free posters for your event. I will pay for The other thing that hangs you up is complexity. them and I’ll run off as many as I can afford and Make them complex. A poster should not sell them.’ Sure. Well, here they’re getting 200 transmit its message quickly and simply. They’ll free posters, one of the top poster artists at that be gone man. I wanna see if they could stay time. So I commissioned the poster, I designed there an hour. I wanna see if they can stay there the poster, I produced the poster, and I sold the a whole week . . . poster. I was selling posters to Australia, the other side of the world.” “. . . That was advertising. The only way that those events were advertised was by those Stanley Mouse remembers that Moscoso posters, which we made as hard to read . . . I was particularly adept at taking electric colors made as hard to read as possible. And it worked. and arranging them in ways that made his The halls got filled up, because of those posters. posters look as if the images were moving on the They started getting torn off the wall. Then you paper. “He would actually get animation going could buy them for a dollar. They go up at the in the way he used reds, yellows and blues,” Trieste and catty-corner from the Trieste was Mouse explained. “Victor did some really involved Ben Friedman’s poster shop. They’d be in Ben positive and negative overlays that would escape Friedman’s for a dollar. So, here’s advertising most peoples’ mental abilities. And he had a fine coming at you from both sides of the corner hand that was technical and masterful and that . . . when they started getting sold for a dollar, not many people possess.” hey, I took art history. I know that when the Toulouse Lautrec and Jules Cheret posters In 2018, at the ripe old age of 82, Victor started getting ripped off the walls, that’s when Moscoso was finally recognised for his the poster stores opened. For lo and behold, I outstanding work in pioneering the psychedelic said to myself, this is what happened in Toulouse poster aesthetic in the 60’s by being awarded Lautrec’s day. If it happened in Toulouse the AIGA Medal, becoming the only artists out of Lautrec’s day and it looks like it’s happening now, the “Big Five” to receive this honour. well, then it’s happening now. All I wanted to do was invent posters. Not free posters, not white rabbit posters, not East Totem West posters. I didn’t want to do those. I wanted to, I guess because of the historical value,

Moscoso’s Neon Rose posters for The Matrix brought his work international attention during the Summer of Love in 1967. He had pioneered the use of vibrating colors to create the ‘psychedelic’ effect in poster art.

VICTOR MOSCOSO

Victor Moscoso was also the first of the Big Five to have his posters shown in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His work is in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and in the Library of Congress and many other Museums around the world. The Neon Rose

VICTOR MOSCOSO

This is a fine example of Victor Moscoso’s use of opposing colors to create a vibrating effect by introducing uncertainty into the eyes of the viewer. The image itself was a solarized black and white photo by Belgian surrealist Raoul Ubac that was borrowed and psychedelicized by Moscoso. Only first original pre-concert printings of this issue were produced, no second printings exist, and it was the 8th produced by artist Victor Moscoso in his retinal-burning Neon Rose series. By the end of 1966, Moscoso realized that the posters he and others were creating to advertise the dance concerts proliferating in San Francisco were admired – and sellable – works of art and thus could not only advertise the concert but also be sold later to adorn hippie walls. So Moscoso went to the management of The Matrix and offered to create and print their posters for free, as long as he could print extras and sell them to the growing hippie VICTOR MOSCOSO

One of the most iconic images of the psychedelic period, this piece takes a much more subtle approach to the genre, mixing in the usual bright neon colors with a minimalist feel and only when looking closely at the sunglasses do you get let in on the secret (the name of the band, venue and dates). This poster shines at a distance however as the facial features become three-dimensional and the colors richen. The image was clipped out of a magazine by Victor Moscoso late at night on deadline. Perhaps sometimes the best art isn’t labored over! The Chambers Brothers began as a gospel group that migrated to the burgeoning folk music movement in the early 1960’s. They played at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival where Bob Dylan “went electric,” which they began to do following the event as well. They scored their biggest hit in 1968 with, “Time has Come Today,” which was an 11-minute tripped out drum-driven song. VICTOR MOSCOSO

A truly inspired surrealist collage by Victor Moscoso featuring a man surfing on a few hands while a sun is donated to the scene by another hand. Moscoso’s lettering was in fine style for this piece, featuring his quintessential “infinite framing” compositional technique. Canned Heat was an American rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1965 by two blues enthusiasts, Alan Wilson and Bob Hite, who took the name from Tommy Johnson’s 1928 “Canned Heat Blues”, a song about an alcoholic who had desperately turned to drinking Sterno, which was originally marketed as “canned heat.” The band appeared at most major musical events at the end of the 1960s, performing blues standards along with their own material and occasionally indulging in lengthy psychedelic solos. Two of their songs – “Going Up the Country” and “On the Road Again” – became international hits. VICTOR MOSCOSO

Victor Moscoso’s use of vibrating colours inspired by Josef Albers and a structured compositional technique ensured he stood out from his peers.

While Victor Moscoso’s work is widely known for his use of vibrating colours, his work is more than just a clever application of colours and printing techniques. Moscoso’s style is most notable for its visual intensity, which was obtained by manipulating form and color to create optical effects. He used clashing, vibrating colors and deliberately illegible psychedelic lettering to command attention. Moscoso’s academic training as a designer helped to lend artistic credibility to a flourishing medium of commercial art — the rock poster and handbill. His designs, which included several pieces for the Avalon Ballroom and the Fillmore Auditorium (San Francisco’s main concert venues in the 1960s), featured a swirling array of bright colors, dense imagery, and almost illegible lettering that was hand-drawn rather than typeset. This feature of psychedelic art — that it took time and energy for one to decipher — became the movement’s trademark, a way to evoke the era’s social and political instability and mark the underground scene with a singular visual identity apart from mainstream culture.

What also escapes the attention of many people is his use of photo collages and image treatments coupled with a repetitive framing technique that helped bring out interesting positive and negative spatial relationships. He is noted for his extensive use of photographic references found in everyday printed material, right from magazine photoshoots to Art Nouveau references. He would treat these rather dull images and “psychedelize” them often pairing them with distinctive lettering and angled, dynamic compsotions that generated visual interest.

While the poster art of the rest of the Big Five always looked a bit intimate, organic and irregular owing to the fact that all artwork was done by hand, Victor Moscoso’s work is defined by an uncanny cleanliness and symmetry, even though his work was very much handmade, which highlights his skilful hand and mastery which can be attributed to his academic training as a designer. Another defining feature of his poster art is the heavy use of slab serif lettering with bottomheavy slabs and hairline verticals. His spacing of letterforms and their symmetric arrangement gave life to the letters and made the lettering compositions look like images by themselves.

VICTOR MOSCOSO

THE BIRT OF AN

TH AN

Richard Alden Griffin was born June 18th 1944, in Los Angeles, California, to James and Jacqueline Griffin. His dad, Jim, was an electrical engineer. His mom, Jackie, was a housewife. Before Rick’s dad, Jim, became an engineer he originally wanted to work at Disney, but his parents said no, because ‘you couldn’t make a living from cartoons.’ Rick’s dad passed on the same message to his own son, but this time the advice would not be headed. Rick had an older brother, James, born in 1941. Rick grew up in Los Angeles in the 1950’s, reading and collecting comic books and watching Disney animations. For a hobby, Rick’s dad was an amateur archaeologist, so, also, on those trips Rick and his older brother would go on digs with their dad at the Indian Reservations and old Ghost Towns, discovering Native American and old western artifacts. Those trips, the exposure to those old relics, and Rick’s love of comic books would end up having a huge influence on him and his art.

RICK GRIFFIN

As a teenager Rick read “Humbug” and “Mad” cartoon magazines that his parents disapproved of. When he was younger, his first experience with EC comics happened when his dad gave him a dime to go into the drug store and buy a comic book. He enthusiastically went in and looked over the selection of various titles until he came to one that really grabbed his attention. It was an issue of “MAD” with the life story of Will Elder. Rick said there was something unusual about the format of the book, a strange use of ‘doctored’ photographs mixed with weird art and it struck him as rebellious. It gave him a fantastic, disoriented feeling. He immediately purchased the publication and hurried back to show his dad. As his father leafed through the pages he was bewildered and disturbed. He told Rick he had to take it back and pick out one that was funny or pick out a Superman comic. But from that day on Rick told himself that he too would be a ‘mad’ artist. Rick learned to surf at age 14 and after he surfed all summer at Torrance beach before entering Narbonne High School, he was hooked. In high school Rick started doodling cartoon surfers learning how to surf. His classmates and friends paid him 50¢ to draw cartoons on t-shirts and notebook covers. He was introduced to Greg Noll, a big wave surfer who shaped surfboards and had a surf shop in Hermosa Beach. Rick drew cartoon images on the walls of the shop and illustrated Noll’s first annual surf publication in trade for a new surfboard. After a showing of “Surf Fever” at his high school, Rick met John Severson, the producer of the film and who was also the publisher and owner of “Surfer” magazine. John liked Rick’s cartoon drawings and hired him to illustrate a comic strip in the magazine. The main character was a blond haired little surfer called “Murphy” who looked a lot like his creator. Rick met his wife Ida while studying at the Chouinard Art Institute in California. Rick and Ida became pregnant. Rick was worried about the draft and Ida couldn’t keep juggling working graveyard shifts to pay for school during the day, so Ida moved back to the bay area, where her family was living and Rick came up to visit. Ida rented an apartment in San Francisco and met her new neighbors and future fellow poster artists, Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley, and Bob Seidemann. Their first child, Flaven Heather Highland Griffin, was born in the summer of 1966. Ida left San Francisco and met Rick down

in Mexico. They spent the next few months living on the beach. When Rick wasn’t out surfing he lounged in a hammock while Ida took care of their new baby. Rick was also studying and sketching the Huichol Indians and experimenting with psychedelic drugs. Frustrated with Chouinard and Surfer Magazine’s censorship of his Griffin-Stoner strips, Griffin folded up shop and decided to spend the summer of 1966 in Mexico surfing. Griffin later reunited with Ida and relocated to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, where the Jook Savages had been offered a group show of their artwork at The Psychedelic Shop. Rick Griffin’s first San Francisco rock poster was for the Jook Savages Art Show at the “New Improved Psychedelic Shop,” and it led directly to an invitation to design a poster for PowWow: A Gathering of the Tribes for a Human Be-in, a jamboree integrating the clans of the Berkeley radical stronghold, the lingering North Beach Beat scene, and the blossoming hippie community. This poster would be his introduction to the pychedelic poster movement in San Francisco. More than 20,000 tribe members assembled on the polo field in Golden Gate Park to hear Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Lenore Kandel, Timothy Leary, and Jerry Rubin, and dance to the

music of the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Sir Douglas Quintet, Big Brother & The Holding Company, and Jefferson Airplane. The poster so perfectly captured the vibe of the event that it instantly became iconic. Griffin’s work was also featured in the January Human Be-In edition of the S.F Oracle—released to coincide with the event—with a spectacular centerfold illustration for Allen Ginsburg’s “Renaissance or Die.” Chet Helms and Bill Graham both recruited Griffin to work on their promotions. From March of 1967 through November of 1968, Rick Griffin produced more than two dozen posters for the Family Dog and Bill Graham, plus almost as many commissions and projects done for the Berkeley Bonaparte poster company (in which he was a partner) and for out-of-town clients. Griffin’s first official Family Dog poster hit the streets in March 1967.

produced after Jerry Garcia met with Rick backstage one evening. Based on the band’s love of Griffin’s work, they asked him to create something for them, giving him complete artistic freedom. At the time, Ida was pregnant with their second child. Rick, ever influenced by his immediate reality, created artwork full of symbolic representation of life and death and birth, all within a surfers paradise of sunshine, blue skies and the bursting forth of life. Rick liked the intrigue and playfulness of palindromes and titled it “Aoxomoxoa.” Initially the piece was done for upcoming Grateful Dead shows, but it was so powerful the band used it for the cover of their 3rd album. It was a natural progression for Rick to add album covers to his repertoire. Rick did not survive an accident when his Harley Heritage Softail met with the side of a van on a sunny afternoon, on a country road in Petaluma, California. It was the second time in his life to face death, this time he did not get another chance. The last piece of art Rick created was for “The City,” a local San Francisco magazine. The image was of an artist kneeling at the pearly gates of heaven to meet his maker holding his quill and inkwell.

Early in 1967, Griffin was commissioned to design the logo for a new magazine called Rolling Stone. By July 17, the Big Five (Wilson, Kelley, Mouse, Moscoso, and Griffin) were the subject of the solo “Joint Show” at the uptown Moore Gallery, which generated huge opening-night crowds and massive publicity, including a review in the San Francisco Chronicle. On September 1, Griffin (alongside the Big Five, except Mouse), was featured in a LIFE cover story called “The Great Poster Wave.” As if that were not enough, Griffin was Robert Crumb’s choice to contribute to the second issue of Zap Comix. Griffin and Moscoso had already been toying with the idea of producing a comic book, and Griffin’s famous mutant Morning Paper funny pages poster (FD89) is said to have inspired Crumb’s Ultra Super Modernistic Comics in Zap #1. Griffin contributed heavily to Zap #2. One of Rick’s most iconic images was

RICK GRIFFIN

Rick Griffin’s Jimi Hendrix Experience, an offset lithograph poster from 1968 is one of his most iconic pieces. The nearly illegible, undulating text spells the name of the bands performing at the iconic Fillmore: the Jimi Hendrix Experience, John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, and Albert King. At the center of the poster is a bloodshot, winged eyeball with reptilian limbs climbing through a hole in the deep red foreground. The outline of the cut-out emits orange and yellow flames, as though the red page has been burned through for the eyeball to enter. In its right claw, the figure holds up a skull head, an allusion to the vanitas symbol of mortality. The fluid, electric lettering echoes the mercurial flames, alluding to the energetic, riotous music featured at the concert. Griffin’s adventurous and shocking composition reveals the eclectic aesthetic of the psychedelic movement and San Francisco’s thirst for expression and experimentation.

RICK GRIFFIN

This is one of the finest of the San Francisco posters, and one of the most sought-after. Artist Rick Griffin, contributes some masterful images and tripped-out lettering for this Quicksilver poster, which also features Kaleidoscope and Charlie Musselwhite (although good luck trying to read Charley Musselwhite -- now you see it, now you don’t). The colors are vivid, and leap out from the black background. A bleeding heart forms roots and grows toward the sky, surrounded by a red border that is descended clearly from Art Nouveau architectural forms. The poster is a continuation of a series of posters that featured Rick Griffin’s now iconic tripped-out lettering, starving for any semblance of readability that has come to define a visual style that epitomises psychedelic culture to this day and became a mainstay across genres of music album cover art. RICK GRIFFIN

Seeking inspiration from his immediate reality and his experiences, Rick Griffin added a personal touch to his body of work that resonated with millions across the counterculture movement and the decades beyond it.

Rick Griffin was the most versatile and complete artist of the Big Five, as characterised by his body of work that showcases and highlights his repertoire of visual styles and his evolution as an artist. Drawing on influences as diverse as Native American culture and the California surf scene, Rick Griffin produced psychedelic poster art, album sleeves, and logos of such brilliance that they are among the primary images associated with Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, and other legendary performers. His poster for the Human Be-In in 1967 in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, advertised as the “Gathering Of Tribes,” promoted the event that kicked off the Summer of Love. His logo for Rolling Stone magazine set its visual style. Rick’s work quickly grew into a merging of colors, symbols and extreme typography. Rick would design a new poster every couple of weeks. He usually started at the top of an illustration board, using a rapidograph ink pen, designing the lettering for the band names and then he would decide on a central image along with a border. The lithography process was three separate acrylic overlays; yellow, red, and blue. The black inked design was printed first followed by the other three colors. The legendary, Jimi Hendrix “Flying Eyeball” BG105, 1968 poster is probably one of Rick’s most sought after posters for its iconic, psychedelic Rick Griffin imagery and coloring. His talents as a cartoon artist and his time at the Surfer magazine shine through his initial works and his works for Zap Comix, pairing his comic book illustration style with lettering styles that varied over the years. His initial psychedelic posters featured monochrome aesthetics, illustrations and a unique lettering

RICK GRIFFIN

style came from a combination of drawing cartoon strips as a young teenager, and those visits to the South West as a kid, walking through old town boardwalks with a Saloon, a General Store, a Post Office, and the Sheriff’s jail, all with lettering that was slab serif style, originally used as headlines during the Victorian 1900’s. His lettering style and use of colour changed drastically and became more visually exaggerated over the years, owing to his personal psychedelic experiences, with lettering that was highly illegible, tightly spaced condensed letterforms with jagged and sharp

AOXOMOXOA

FOR THE GRATEFUL DEAD

THE BAND’S NAME IS SPELLED OUT IN AN ORNATE MUTANT GOTHIC TYPEFACE THAT ARCS ACROSS THE SPHERICAL SPACE BULGING OUT TOWARD THE VIEWER WITH ELABORATE SHADOWS. IT’S A CROWNING BIT OF TYPOGRAPHY FOR ONE OF GRIFFIN’S MOST INTRICATELY CONSTRUCTED PIECES.

RICK GRIFFIN

THE PHARAOH

FOR THE GRATEFUL DEAD

THIS PIECE FEATURES A GRINNING SKULL PHARAOH, A MODERN REPRESENTATION OF THE ICONIC GRATEFUL DEAD IMAGERY. GRIFFIN MISLABELED THE VENUE AS THE BERKELEY COMMUNITY “CENTER” INSTEAD OF THEATRE, WITH MOST POSTERS BEING CONFISCATED AT THE ENTRANCE.

RICK GRIFFIN

Stanley George Miller (born October 10, 1940), better known as Mouse or Stanley Mouse, is an American artist, notable for his 1960s psychedelic rock concert poster designs for the Grateful Dead and Journey albums cover art.

rock posters in San Francisco during the sixties wartime era of social revolution, political passion and musical innovation. While Mouse was away in Detroit, the parties had become so big they had moved to dance halls. And the promoters had started using posters. He considered Wes is father was an artist who had worked as an Wilson’s early posters—rounded shapes, funky animator for Walt Disney on the 1937 film Snow looking—the start of an art movement. It was in White, so it was natural for Stanley Miller to grow San Francisco where he met Alton Kelley with up drawing pictures and cartoons around the whom he would eventually form a lasting artistic family dinner table in Detroit, Michigan. He could bond and create some of the finest imagery draw a perfect circle when he was five. When a associated with the psychedelic 60’s. grade school friend gave Stanley the nickname “Mouse O’Miller,” he started signing and writing Kelley and Mouse were innovators of the things as ‘Mouse.’ It caught on and everybody most important art movement of the latter part knew him as “Mouse,” instantly, in grade school. of the twentieth century. They captured the passion and excitement of the times with their Stanley grew up in Detroit where Motown distinctive styles. In 1970 Stanley returned to music and the city’s obsession with motor cars Detroit and was given a one man show at the combined with his genius at drawing and made Detroit Institute of Art. Stanley’s life path clear at an early age. Quiet and always drawing in class, Stanley earned his In the late sixties Stanley moved from San pen name, Mouse in the seventh grade. He’d Francisco to London to flame Eric Clapton’s Rolls become known for his sketches of monsterRoyce. From there he did art for Blind Faith and driven muscle cars and as soon as he began the Beatles and returned to America to work signing with his pen name, he became instantly on the signage at Woodstock with Kelley. Kelley famous at thirteen. and Mouse were working on a Jimi Hendrix cover but Jimi died before it was released. That Stanley found a niche in the Detroit hot rod art morphed into several covers for Journey, culture by detailing extraordinary paint jobs on including Infinity, Escape and Captured. vehicles until no quality hot rod in town could be seen without a Mouse pin-striping job. Soon Stanley designed with Art Nouveau elegance after, he began applying his favorite subjects and American pop-art sensibilities. He produced to T-shirts with an airbrush. In the tenth grade, posters for the Fillmore Auditorium and the Stanley did some graffiti on the high school hang Avalon Ballroom. The art promoting the San out and was expelled from high school, the silver Francisco scene became instant collectibles lining being that he then enrolled in art school. and went far beyond the local scene to reach museums worldwide. Art and music came He received his formal training at Detroit’s together in images associated with the The School for the Society of Arts and Crafts which Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, was connected to the Detroit art museum. In Big Brother and the Holding Company, The art school, Mouse was keenly interested in life Rolling Stones, The Beatles and Blind Faith. In all, drawing, and he excelled at it. Consequently, Mouse and Kelley did the first eight album covers Mouse started looking for the next step. That for the Grateful Dead, including the delightful Ice was about the time when psychedelic drugs Cream Kid/Rainbow Foot cover of their Europe came in and the Vietnam War gave rise to the 72 live album. The cover art for Steve Millers anti-war movement. A lot of Detroiters had album Book of Dreams won a Grammy Award. moved to San Francisco, and Mouse got word that a lot was happening there. Mouse had been Today some old friends have returned to to San Francisco for car shows and had liked Mouse’s palette: rock and roll and hot rod art. the city. In 1965, Mouse drove his brand new A significant revival of interest in hot rods and Porsche to San Francisco and got a little place in a new subculture is springing up around the Berkeley. After a draft board episode in Detroit, aesthetic of the hot rod genre. Stanley Mouse is Mouse made a bee-line back to San Francisco a revered elder in that tribe, lately contributing in a rented hearse with a “Make Love, Not War” to the movement with new and classic monsters sticker that he had put on its back window. He dropped out to follow a higher calling to do

MOUSE & KELLEY

Alton Kelley, while the least artistically talented of the “Big Five” San Francisco poster artists, had perhaps the largest role in launching the graphical arm of the psychedelic poster scene. Born June 17, 1940 in Houlton, Maine, Kelley is remembered as the creator (with his artistic partner, Stanley Mouse) of hundreds of classic psychedelic rock posters, such as the famed “skull and roses” poster for a Grateful Dead show at the Avalon Ballroom. Mr. Kelley and Mouse created 26 posters for just the first year of the Avalon’s operation. But prior to that, Kelley was one of four people who called themselves The Family Dog and decided to throw the world’s first psychedelic dance-concerts at Longshoreman’s Hall in September 1965, essentially starting the San Francisco scene. The quartet had just returned to the Bay Area after spending an LSD-drenched summer restoring a silver rush dancehall in Virginia City, Nev., called the Red Dog Saloon. Mr. Kelley, a motorcycle enthusiast since his youth, who painted pinstripes on bike gas tanks, designed the flyers advertising the original Family Dog shows, but lacked drafting ability. When he met Stanley Mouse, who had recently relocated from Detroit where he had made a name for himself doing hot rod art, Mr. Kelley found the draftsman he needed,

The two formed Mouse Studios and cranked out art together, with Kelley’s drawing skills eventually improving to the point where lefthanded Kelley would be working on one side of the easel, and right-handed Mouse on the other.

Francisco where Janis Joplin first rehearsed with Big Brother and the Holding Company.

Distributing handbills and posters personally, and not above barking a forthcoming show outside the Avalon, Kelley became as familiar a figure in the pageant of the suburb’s streets as its mime troupes, dancers, buskers, vendors of journals such as the Psychedelic Oracle, and the hippies, who begged from the “straights” during 1967’s summer of love.

Throughout the 1970s, he was a jobbing illustrator (with Journey and Paul McCartney his most prestigious clients), receiving a 1979 Grammy award for his contribution to the Steve Miller Band’s Greatest Hits retrospective. Nevertheless, on settling in Petaluna, California, he came to specialise more in air-brushed paintings of hot-rod and custom cars, which were reproduced on T-shirts. Among other latter-day activities were the publication of his and Miller’s joint autobiography.

Mouse said they could work for hours in silence. “We knew what to do,” he said. “We didn’t have to talk.” During the heyday of the Avalon By 1966, a heavily bearded and long-haired Ballroom, the pair would frequent the SF Public Kelley had teamed up with draughtsman Stanley Library (otherwise known as “the Internet,” in “Mouse” Miller. Both became mainstays of 1967), looking for images they could employ Family Dog, a multi-media collective pivotal in in their poster-making. “Stanley and I had no the transformation of San Francisco’s Haightidea what we were doing,” Kelley told the San Ashbury district into a psychedelic wonderland, Francisco Chronicle in 2007,”but we went ahead remembered chiefly for the “happenings” that and looked at American Indian stuff, Chinese began with A Tribute to Dr Strange - named after stuff, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Modern, Bauhaus, a comic-strip character - at the Avalon Ballroom. whatever. We were stunned by what we found Bo Diddley, the Sir Douglas Quintet, Jefferson and what we were able to do. We had free rein Airplane, among other were a wide spectrum of to just go graphically crazy. Before that, all acts who performed there and at other dance advertising was pretty much just typeset with a halls rented by Family Dog. photograph of something.”

“He had the most impeccable taste of anybody I knew,” said Mouse, “He would do the layouts, and I would do the drawing.” They worked together steadily for 15 years and on and Alton Kelley passed away at the age of 67 off thereafter. Their Mouse Studios was located after suffering from Osteoporosis in Petaluma, in a converted Lower Haight firehouse in San California on June 1, 2008.

MOUSE & KELLEY

The Skeleton & Roses poster. Here it is, undoubtedly the most famous poster from the Family Dog series, as well as the most recognized image ever used by the Grateful Dead. This iconic piece represents the holy grail of mainstream psychedelic rock posters. The central image is a drawing done by Edward Joseph Sullivan, a late 19th and early 20th century artist. Sullivan created this drawing to illustrate one of the quatrains of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Mouse and Kelley added the color, as the original drawing was in black and white. The resulting poster has lived on through time and has increased in value at a dramatic pace. It became the standing and lasting iconography for the Grateful Dead, with the skeleton and roses acting as the centrepiece for future renditions of the bands performances, highlighting the lasting and powerful impact of this imagery created by the Mouse and Kelley duo. MOUSE & KELLEY

This is one of the most stunning psychedelic poster artists’ homage to the Art Nouveau style. An interesting juxtaposition of swirling art nouveau hair on one side matched with blank space on the other. It calls to mind the art of Alphonse Mucha as seen in one of his posters from the height of the Art Nouveau period. This poster is yet another reminder of Mouse & Kelley’s ardent love for Art Nouveau imagery. Love was a Los Angeles-based band which had some minor hits with Seven and Seven Is, Alone Again Or, and You Set The Scene. Their influence (Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, Jim Morrison, The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Dammed…) was much greater than their commercial success. The Congress of Wonders was a Bay Area political comedy act and Sons of Champlin were a hitless horns-based mainstay of the SF music scene. MOUSE & KELLEY

MOUSE & KELLEY

One of the classic images of the time, this Mouseand-Kelley-designed poster is known as the “Edwardian Ball.” This event was held for the Associated Students of San Francisco State College as their Homecoming dance. This poster is quite scarce; only 250 were printed according to the student activities manager who commissioned Mouse to design it. This poster also features a gorgeous signature in gold ink by the artist, Stanley Mouse. Interestingly, this was one of the few “dance concerts,” at the Fillmore from 1966-1968 that was not produced by Bill Graham. The Jefferson Airplane had released their first album, “Jefferson Airplane Takes Off,” in September of that year and in October they parted ways with Signe Anderson their original female lead singer. Her replacement, Grace Slick, was well known to the band—her previous group, the Great Society, often opened for the Airplane at their Bay Area concerts. MOUSE & KELLEY

The duo combined their respective artisitic and aesthetic capabilities to work in tandem and produce some of the most everlasting images associated with the psychedelic 60’s.

Alton Kelley and Stanley Mouse were frequent collaborators during the 1960’s, producing some of their best works when working together in the Mouse Studio’s office at 715 Ashbury Street in the San Francisco Bay Area. Hence, it made sense to talk about their collective creative genius in the same breath. According to Mouse’s biography, “he dropped out to follow a higher calling to do rock posters in San Francisco during the sixties wartime era of social revolution, political passion and musical innovation.” His return to California in 1965 sent his art on a new trip. There he met Alton Kelley, then affiliated with The Family Dog, and the pair began producing rock posters for Chet Helms shows at the Avalon Ballroom. Mouse liked working with other artists—a penchant he refers to as one of his “Libra traits”—and this began a collaboration that would last into the 1980s. Mouse’s hand, trained from years of t-shirt designing and hot rod striping, and his love of Art Nouveau combined well with Kelley’s of-the-moment style and keen eye for layouts. The two most-remembered Mouse and Kelley collaborations are counterculture complimentary: a play on the ZigZag man familiar to denizens of cigarette rolling papers, and a poster for one of the most famous rock ‘n’ roll acts of all-time. In 1966, the pair were commissioned to make a poster for a show featuring The Grateful Dead. For this band they’d never heard of, Mouse and Kelley first designed a sheet that incorrectly spelled the band’s name as “Greatful Dead;’ for their second attempt, they went to the San Francisco Public Library for inspiration. Mouse recalled: “We would go to the San Francisco library and peruse the books on poster art. They had a back room full of books you couldn’t take out with great references. We were just going through and looking for something. And found this thing and thought,

MOUSE & KELLEY

‘This has Grateful Dead written all over it.’ What Mouse found was The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, a twelfth-century Arabian work of poetry. An Alton Kelley hallmark is the interesting yet simple use of photography in some of his posters, coupled with Art Nouveau motifs that helped create simple compositions that focused on the imagery, which was a far cry from the works of Wes Wilson, Rick Griffin and Victor Moscoso. Stanley Mouse stamped his identity on his works through his now iconic “Mouse” signature, which featured an illustrated mouse alongside his signature and adorned many of his sought-after masterpieces.

GIRL WITH GREEN HAIR

FOR THE JIM KWESKIN JUG BAND

THE CENTRAL IMAGE OF THIS POSTER IS THE JOB ROLLING PAPER POSTER CREATED IN 1897 BY THE WELL KNOWN ART NOUVEAU ARTIST, ALPHONSE MUCHA (1860-1939). MOUSE AND KELLY “BORROWED” THIS IMAGE AND PROCEEDED TO CHANGE THE COLORS COMPLETELY, GIVING IT THE PROPER PSYCHEDELIC EFFECT. 81

MOUSE & KELLEY

ZEBRAMAN

FOR 13TH FLOOR ELEVATORS

THE POSTER WAS PRODUCED BY SHINING A LIGHT THROUGH A VENETIAN BLIND ONTO A MAN’S FACE. THE PHOTOGRAPH OF THIS IMAGE FIRST APPEARED ON A LIFE MAGAZINE COVER IN 1954. MOUSE AND KELLEY ADDED THE ORANGE COLOR TO THE ORIGINAL BLACK-AND-WHITE IMAGE AND PLACED IT ON THE BLUE BACKGROUND WITH GREAT EFFECT. 83

MOUSE & KELLEY

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Bahr Gallery 2. Wes-Wilson.com 3. Rickgriffindesigns.com 4. Mousestudios.com 5. Classicposters.com 6. The Rock Poster Society 7. Summer of Love 8. New York Times 9. Rolling Stone 10. MoMA 11. SF MoMA 12. Cooper Hewitt 13. Vox.com (YouTube)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

WESLEY WILSON VICTOR MOSCOSO RICK GRIFFIN STANLEY MILLER ALTON KELLEY