The Art of the Music Poster

of the 60s and 70s

Introduction

The Art of the Music Poster from the 60s and 70s features posters of such rock music notables as The Beatles, The Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd, The Sex Pistols, Bob Dylan, Jimi
Hendrix and David Bowie. The posters from the 60s and 70s brought together music, fine art and commerce. They reflect the anti-establishmentarian attitudes and experimental visual styles of their time and the best of them exhibit a visual strength that has transcended their short-lived function as advertisement. They also conveyed the avant-garde spirit of the day to the cultural mainstream; in this way, they are linked to posters throughout the twentieth century. The modern poster, as we define it today, dates back to the nineteenth century with the ntroduction of French printmaker Jules Cheret’s posters of Parisian nightclub performers. Significantly, Cheret’s posters were looked at from their inception as aesthetic objects, not merely as disposable advertising. Toulouse Lautrec, the French nineteenth century painter, followed Cheret by creating posters for dance halls and cafes. Lautrec’s posters were so admired as fine art they were removed from street walls and taken home. A similar kind of enthusiasm for posters emerged decades later across the Atlantic where rock music inspired young graphic artists residing in the San Francisco
Bay area to create some of the most enduring images of their time in the form of music posters.

San Francisco’s thriving music scene was propelled in large part by two San Francisco clubs, Fillmore Auditorium and Avalon Ballroom. Both clubs booked local bands and held concerts nearly every night. Bill Graham, owner of Fillmore Auditorium, and Chet Helms, head of the Family Dog organization, commissioned local artists to create concert posters. The posters reflected the area’s countercultural atmosphere of free love, psychedelic drugs, hard rock, folk and experimental music. Among the graphic artists creating music posters, the most noteworthy were Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley, Rick Griffin, Wes Wilson and Victor Moscoso. Their works are stylistically diverse and inspired by a wide range of art movements: Art Noveau, Jugendstil, Viennese Secessionism and Surrealism, among others. They were also influenced by nineteenth century Victorian advertising motifs. More importantly, their posters epitomized the Bay area’s spirit by incorporating contemporary countercultural imagery: LSD visions, long hair, bright, colorful clothes, joints, patterns and colors displayed in light shows. The artists strived to capture the aural and visual experience of “acid test parties” and concerts. In 1967, Mouse and Kelley created one of the most unforgettable rock poster images, which they entitled Skeleton and Roses. Created for The Grateful Dead, Skeleton and Roses was taken from an illustration by the late nineteenth century English illustrator, Edmund Sullivan. When Mouse and Kelley studied Sullivan’s illustration of quatrain 26 of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Kelley said: “This has
Grateful Dead all over it."1 The band chose the image for an album cover and logo.
 

The 1970s saw the breakup of the Beatles and the death of Elvis Presley; rock music itself had splintered into many styles: soft rock, hard rock, country rock, folk rock, punk rock and disco. Likewise, the music posters of the 70s exhibited an array of influences and styles. Among the more notable were the posters Aladdin Sane (1973) and God Save the Queen (1978). Aladdin Sane was David Bowie’s follow-up album to Ziggy Stardust, the name of an outer space visitor to earth. Bowie is photographed as alter-ego Ziggy Stardust; photographer Brian Duffy capture’s the character’s androgyny and loneliness. James Reid’s posters for The Sex Pistols, such as God Save the Queen (1978), won him international recognition. The poster featured in this exhibition, actually one of two versions of God Save the Queen, was a promotional poster for the band’s single of the same title. Reid’s posters convey the punk movement spirit of total rebellion. His poster God Save the Queen (1978) is an appropriation and subversion of a well-recognized official portrait of Queen Elizabeth by Cecil Beaton. Reid placed the portrait on top of a torn Union Jack, sealed the Queen’s eyes and lips, and displayed the band name and title in blackmail- style lettering. The poster’s style, anarchic, caustic and aggressive, reflected the punk movement’s unbridled energy at the time. It was graphic art anarchy, a sharing of attitude and spirit between raucous “punker” and commercial artist, a partnership of kindred minds like those partnerships of the 60s and 70s that produced many of rock music’s iconic images.

Return to cover

Copyright 2003 Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art

www.sama-art.org