The Quintessence of the Psychedelic Universe
La quintessence du psychédélismearticle by Erik Biétry-Rivierre, Le Figaro, 29 December 2004
(freely translated from the original French)
It is not necessary to come loaded down with drugs. Arranged with perfection in a wing of the Louvre like paintings from the Grand Siècle, protected under glass, mounted on a metallic background, some 200 psychedelic posters from San Francisco (of the 600 known to have been printed), edited between 1966 and 1969, announce the upcoming rock concerts of that epoch. Seeing them now does not invite one to sink into a mood of nostalgia but rather to make a serious aesthetic revaluation. They belong to the musée de la publicité, which has arranged this exposition to last throughout the winter months. These treasures were recently rediscovered by the present conservatrice, Amélie Gastuat, who admits quite frankly that she knew very little about "flower power". "The collection had been simply left here in 1972 by Alex Janos, a hippie from the West Coast, married to a Frenchwoman. These posters have never been exposed here nor lent elsewhere to be seen."
We all may well thank this mysterious person, for in six halls of the museum these posters, the quintessence of the psychedelic universe, today please the eyes!
In effect, if 1966-1969 is the period when music was King, it is nevertheless graphic design, an art that habitually serves as middleman, which exploded the most forcefully in California. One can find this evidence for himself in a rare film, drawn from the archives of Ken Kesey (author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and pioneer in the LSD experience), shown throughout the exposition - such scenes as The Grateful Dead playing some blues during an "acid test", Wes Wilson or Lee Conklin multiplying audacious and shattered references to this and that, all this swallowed up in a jumbled maelstrom of saturated colours and tangled whorls, drawing pell-mell into its undulating universe shades and traces of Art Deco, surrealism, kinetic art, Klimt and the Secessionists of Vienna, photography, Ingres, Egyptian art, Indian art, freemasons, figures from Bruegel, from Bosch, ceramics, science-fiction, the Far West, Edgar Allan Poe, the Alice of Lewis Carroll, the Zouave Zig-Zag of Jules Chéret, including la vâche qui rit...
The goal that is sought in all this is unique: to glide, to soar. Any direct message in itself is of little importance. The appearance of a Jimi Hendrix or a Janis Joplin, the Doors or the Jefferson Airplane in concert is already experienced in anticipation through the ecstatic polychrome of these flyers and posters.
After "the summer of love", once rock music suffered the hardening of star-making, never again would the subsequent posters dare distort to such a point the lettering, abuse to the breaking-point the thirst for the gothic or letters drowned in a sea of colour, quasi-unreadable.
To produce all that, one must have had real technical skill. The dozen graphic artists of the psychedelic movement had acquired a war-chest of such skills - at the university!
Wes Wilson held the catalogues of the Jungenstil and Expressionism for his Bible. Victor Moscoso had followed the classes of Joseph Albers, theoretician and forerunner of Optical Art and former member of the famed Bauhaus. One is therefore far removed from the simple delirium of the breathless emulators of Timothy Leary or the cadets of the Beat Generation.
During the brief period of this unbridled utopia, these artists and the others of the "Big 5" - namely Rick Griffin, Alton Kelley and Stanley Mouse, who formed Mouse Studio - were major art talents. Their work in designing posters and record albums irrigated the entire youthful world from the Height-Ashbury to Goa.
The first initiates attended the concerts at the two temples of Rock, Bill Graham's Fillmore Auditorium and the Avalon Ballroom of the Family Dog. Three or four times each week concerts were organized, accompanied - another novelty - by light shows soaked in orange juice and LSD...
What has become of these popular comets? Some are dead; others live by farming or doing cartoons. None has really pursued a career as painter - ultimate peculiarity of this crazy epoch.
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