Design and Art History – The Psychedelic Movement (CA 1960 – 1970)

In the late sixties something happened to an American generation that would mark them forever. It is a story of war, the fight for racial equality and the explosion of the counterculture, it was a time when a generation rebelled and lost its innocence in the fight against injustice. Vietnam was the first televised war and the images were inescapable.

A decade that ended in disappointment and anger began on a high moral note. Thanks to Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King jr, it seemed that the time had finally come for racial equality in the US.

There is so much to write about in this age that it is very difficult to select just one thing to focus on. Although there is an absurd amount of art and design that stems from this time period. When we talk about the “sixties” the only thing we seem to recognize is music, psychedelic rock and artists like Janis Joplin and Jimmy Hendrix in particular.

However, album art and festival posters are a good place to start. As music was a force to be reckoned with, album art work and poster designs came hand in hand. One thing that seems to reoccur with most visual artists at the time is a relationship with “Underground Comix”. These were small-press or self-published comic strips, generally socially relevant and satirical in nature. These represented contents are considered unsuitable and prohibited for the strictest means of communication.

Rick Griffin:
When searching for band posters, it’s hard to avoid finding a Grateful Dead poster somewhere, anywhere. The artist behind these was Rick Griffin. He was an American artist and one of the leading designers of psychedelic posters in the 1960s. His work within the surf subculture included both movie posters and his comic strip, Murphy.

Victor Moscoso:
Hispanic-American artist, Moscoso was the first of the rock poster artists of the 1960s with experience and formal academic training. After studying art at Cooper Union in New York and then attending Yale University, he moved to San Francisco in 1959 to study at the San Francisco Art Institute. Here he later became an instructor. He was one of the first rock poster artists to use photographic collages in his artwork. His and his poster artwork has continued into the present and is a major inspiration for rock album and poster illustrators to this day.

Bonnie McLean:
Another American artist who made a name for herself at the time was Bonnie MacLean. She was born in Philadelphia and graduated from Penn State University in 1960. She then moved to New York, where she worked at the Pratt Institute while attending drawing classes in the afternoons. She later moved to San Francisco where she met and worked with a man named Bill Graham, who became famous as a promoter of rock concerts at the Fillmore Auditorium. She there she worked with another artist named Wes Wilson.

Wes Wilson:
The aforementioned artist Wes Wilson was also one of the leading illustrators of psychedelic posters in the 1960s. Working with Bill Graham and Bonnie MacLean, he was a big part of promoting venues at the time with posters and illustrative work for musicians and bands. . The font and letters of the posters of this time were created by him. He popularized this “psychedelic” font around 1966 that made the letters appear to move or melt. This lyric is still used on newer albums and artwork for artists like Foo Fighters, Kyuss Lives, and The Queens of the Stone Age. This, in turn, shows that the psychedelic movement continues to influence artists, especially in the world of metal, desert rock, and stoner rock. The style lives on as its own staple.

Modern Poster Styles:
Posters that are still influenced by the styles of artwork can be traced through homages and inspirations in rock and metal posters from the present to this time. Various modern posters can be seen on the Malleus Rock Art Lab web pages if you are interested. I personally find a lot of inspiration through his images.

Thank you for reading.