L. Kent Wolgamott: Turn up, drop in to ‘Peace, Love and the Psychedelic Sixties’
The ’60s rock posters started an art form that continues today.
Two walls alone make the Sheldon Museum of Art’s “Peace, Love and the Psychedelic Sixties” a don’t-miss exhibition.
On one of the walls is a selection of psychedelic concert posters from San Francisco in the mid-’60s, primarily created by Mouse Studios and never before exhibited at Sheldon.
Adjacent to the posters is a group of prints pulled from a 1967 anti-Vietnam War portfolio, again artifacts (and art objects) that had been purchased by but not previously displayed at the museum.
The rock poster portion of the exhibition takes on particular poignancy given the June 1 death of Alton Kelley, who with his partner Stanley “Mouse” Miller, created most of the posters for the Family Dog, a loose confederation of artists, musicians, dancers and others headed by Chet Helms, who put on San Francisco’s earliest psychedelic dances, first at the Longshoremen’s Hall, then, more famously, at the Avalon Ballroom.
Some of the dances were named — one of the posters is for “The Dance of the Five Moons,” another for the “Peacock Ball,” in which the artists, likely Kelley and Mouse, turn the name of the headlining band Quicksilver Messenger Service into a depiction of the bird that gave the dance its title.
Those events took place in 1967. But some of the posters date to 1966, including one for a show by the 13th Floor Elevators, the Texas band fronted by Roky Erickson that arguably invented psychedelic music.
The biggest names of the San Francisco scene, the Grateful Dead and the Jefferson Airplane, are missing from the selection of posters on display. But that’s because the posters were chosen for their aesthetic qualities, primarily use of color and design and not for rock history.
That said, there are posters promoting shows by Moby Grape, Big Brother and the Holding Company and the late Bo Diddley, along with a real surprise, one for Flatt & Scruggs.
From an art-based perspective, it’s instructive to note that, according to a 2007 Kelley interview, he and Mouse lifted ideas from American Native and Chinese art, from Art Nouveau, Art Deco and Bauhaus along with modern and contemporary sources. The result was a distinctive visual language that communicated more than just the facts about an upcoming show.
The ’60s rock posters started an art form that continues today. There’s always a giant show of new poster art at the annual South by Southwest Music Conference. But few of the contemporary posters can match the vintage San Francisco pieces.
The anti-Vietnam War prints also have a contemporary resonance. But it is comparative. The 1967 prints, some by big names in the art world, are powerful, angry protests, a visual reaction to the war that makes similar efforts about the war in Iraq seem pale and weak.
Sculptor Mark di Suvero’s activist broadside begins with huge letters: “LBJohnson: Murderer” and ends with the statement “only you can stop this war” while Ad Reinhardt prints an appeal to end the war on airmail stationery, and Leon Golub’s “Killed Youth” presents a head with open mouth, crying out in anguish.
Making a link back to music is Carol Summers’ print of a Vietnamese woman and children covered with a red ‘X’. Its title is “Kill for Peace,” which was also the title of a protest song by The Fugs, a New York rock band that had much interaction with the city’s art scene in the late ’60s.
The remainder of the exhibition is a collection of pieces from the ’60s that touch on psychedelia, but not all of the work qualifies under that term culturally.
Norman Lewis, for example, was an African-American artist whose 1967 work “Star Gazers” incorporates slight psychedelic imagery, and Paul Terence Feeley’s “Mala” is from 1963, well before the psychedelic era began.
But some of the pieces are unquestionably psychedelic. The most striking of the bunch is Paul Young’s large “#6,” which is made up of small dots of brightly colored paint interlocked into strands. Not quite op art, the strands have a trippy motion that perfectly reflects the acid-drenched year of its production, 1967.
Also clearly psychedelic is Garo Zareh Antreasian’s 1965 lithograph “OJO,” in which red, white, black and green lines curve to create an “eye.”
The late abstract painter Edward Avedisian wasn’t a part of the psychedelic culture. But his 1969 Kansas landscape that uses broad planes of color fits well with the show’s psychedelic imagery.
There’s some sculpture in the small gallery as well, most notably a glass mushroom cloud, adding a 3-dimensional aspect to the show.
Interim curator Sharon Kennedy and the Sheldon staff also have done a nice job in setting the context for the art by putting a timeline with year-by-year major events above the artwork and playing appropriate music in the gallery — during my visit the soundtrack included the Jefferson Airplane’s “Somebody to Love” and Jimi Hendrix’s “The Wind Cries Mary.”
Those elements help create a tone that allows the relatively small “Peace, Love and the Psychedelic Sixties” to paint a picture of the visual culture of a pivotal era in American culture and counterculture.
Reach L. Kent Wolgamott at 473-7244 or kwolgamott@journalstar.com.
Two walls alone make the Sheldon Museum of Art’s “Peace, Love and the Psychedelic Sixties” a don’t-miss exhibition.
On one of the walls is a selection of psychedelic concert posters from San Francisco in the mid-’60s, primarily created by Mouse Studios and never before exhibited at Sheldon.
Adjacent to the posters is a group of prints pulled from a 1967 anti-Vietnam War portfolio, again artifacts (and art objects) that had been purchased by but not previously displayed at the museum.
The rock poster portion of the exhibition takes on particular poignancy given the June 1 death of Alton Kelley, who with his partner Stanley “Mouse” Miller, created most of the posters for the Family Dog, a loose confederation of artists, musicians, dancers and others headed by Chet Helms, who put on San Francisco’s earliest psychedelic dances, first at the Longshoremen’s Hall, then, more famously, at the Avalon Ballroom.
Some of the dances were named — one of the posters is for “The Dance of the Five Moons,” another for the “Peacock Ball,” in which the artists, likely Kelley and Mouse, turn the name of the headlining band Quicksilver Messenger Service into a depiction of the bird that gave the dance its title.
Those events took place in 1967. But some of the posters date to 1966, including one for a show by the 13th Floor Elevators, the Texas band fronted by Roky Erickson that arguably invented psychedelic music.
The biggest names of the San Francisco scene, the Grateful Dead and the Jefferson Airplane, are missing from the selection of posters on display. But that’s because the posters were chosen for their aesthetic qualities, primarily use of color and design and not for rock history.
That said, there are posters promoting shows by Moby Grape, Big Brother and the Holding Company and the late Bo Diddley, along with a real surprise, one for Flatt & Scruggs.
From an art-based perspective, it’s instructive to note that, according to a 2007 Kelley interview, he and Mouse lifted ideas from American Native and Chinese art, from Art Nouveau, Art Deco and Bauhaus along with modern and contemporary sources. The result was a distinctive visual language that communicated more than just the facts about an upcoming show.
The ’60s rock posters started an art form that continues today. There’s always a giant show of new poster art at the annual South by Southwest Music Conference. But few of the contemporary posters can match the vintage San Francisco pieces.
The anti-Vietnam War prints also have a contemporary resonance. But it is comparative. The 1967 prints, some by big names in the art world, are powerful, angry protests, a visual reaction to the war that makes similar efforts about the war in Iraq seem pale and weak.
Sculptor Mark di Suvero’s activist broadside begins with huge letters: “LBJohnson: Murderer” and ends with the statement “only you can stop this war” while Ad Reinhardt prints an appeal to end the war on airmail stationery, and Leon Golub’s “Killed Youth” presents a head with open mouth, crying out in anguish.
Making a link back to music is Carol Summers’ print of a Vietnamese woman and children covered with a red ‘X’. Its title is “Kill for Peace,” which was also the title of a protest song by The Fugs, a New York rock band that had much interaction with the city’s art scene in the late ’60s.
The remainder of the exhibition is a collection of pieces from the ’60s that touch on psychedelia, but not all of the work qualifies under that term culturally.
Norman Lewis, for example, was an African-American artist whose 1967 work “Star Gazers” incorporates slight psychedelic imagery, and Paul Terence Feeley’s “Mala” is from 1963, well before the psychedelic era began.
But some of the pieces are unquestionably psychedelic. The most striking of the bunch is Paul Young’s large “#6,” which is made up of small dots of brightly colored paint interlocked into strands. Not quite op art, the strands have a trippy motion that perfectly reflects the acid-drenched year of its production, 1967.
Also clearly psychedelic is Garo Zareh Antreasian’s 1965 lithograph “OJO,” in which red, white, black and green lines curve to create an “eye.”
The late abstract painter Edward Avedisian wasn’t a part of the psychedelic culture. But his 1969 Kansas landscape that uses broad planes of color fits well with the show’s psychedelic imagery.
There’s some sculpture in the small gallery as well, most notably a glass mushroom cloud, adding a 3-dimensional aspect to the show.
Interim curator Sharon Kennedy and the Sheldon staff also have done a nice job in setting the context for the art by putting a timeline with year-by-year major events above the artwork and playing appropriate music in the gallery — during my visit the soundtrack included the Jefferson Airplane’s “Somebody to Love” and Jimi Hendrix’s “The Wind Cries Mary.”
Those elements help create a tone that allows the relatively small “Peace, Love and the Psychedelic Sixties” to paint a picture of the visual culture of a pivotal era in American culture and counterculture.
Reach L. Kent Wolgamott at 473-7244 or kwolgamott@journalstar.com.
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