Posters provide instant wall power. Carefully chosen they can be most effective. Brilliant in color and bold in form, they are sometimes more appealing than a painting.Though not considered ‘high art’, many poster artists have made significant historical impact capturing life of the times. Henri Toulouse-Lautrec and Alphonse Muncha created groundbreaking designs and provided much inspiration for designers over half a century later. But how many poster designers from the late 1960s can we utter by name?
One of my favorite types of posters ever is rock posters from this time. They made an enormous impression on me. I still carry the same feelings I had when I was first exposed to them in diapers. Then as a child, I used to sit on the floor and gaze at the covers of my father's albums. He would pull a few carefully rolled up posters out that he had tucked away in his closet. I was absolutely memorized. He played the music these posters advertised and tried to explain to me the meaning behind the words. By the time I was eight, I was riding my bike with the pink daisy banana seat and singing along to Cream's Strange Brew up and down the sidewalk of my street. This was the time when the Bee Gees were all that. I didn't care for their girlie voices. Or their clothing. In high school, I would decorate my denim notebook accompanied by a big metal clip with my own psychedelic lettering in black and red marker. I didn’t fully understand what the whole psychedelic experience was all about. But I would save my allowance and go to the local record store to buy records. I wasn't buying Duran Duran albums like all my other friends; I was still stuck in the era in which I was born and saving my quarters for albums by bands like Buffalo Springfield, Hot Tuna and Canned Heat.
I didn't fully understand what these posters were about until I went back East to a small liberal arts college. I arrived as a dewy freckly-faced freshman from the Midwest in my monogrammed sweater, kilt skirt and tasseled loafers (this was some time ago). Things soon changed. I took full advantage of what a liberal arts college had to offer. At that point, I quickly understood what those posters were all about. My pink and green headbands that matched my belts that matched my watch wrist bands were tucked in the bottom drawer of the golden oak dresser in my dorm room. Posters of Jimi Hendrix were scotched taped to the wall and textiles from India were draped over the windows. I lit incense, threw out my hot rollers and grew my hair long. I dressed in long prairie skirts, oversized LL Bean sweaters and wrapped my waist with Guatemalan woven belts. I wore patchouli -- something my mother complained about when I came home for Christmas. She said I smelled like a gerbil.
A decade later, I was still memorized. In Interior Architecture school, I would experiment with my own lettering in drafting classes. Many times my lettering melded into my floor plans or elevations. None of my teachers like it. I had to go home and redo my lettering the proper way for the next class.
When I found out I had the opportunity to check out the latest exhibition at the Denver Art Museum (that's where the DAM part comes in...) on Rock Posters from 1965-1971, I was pretty freakin’ excited. Though my music tastes have changed, I will never pass up listening to a song from this era. Singing along to the radio, loudly in my car with the windows down, I haven’t forgotten one word of a song. And the posters still affect me. Thing is, these posters inspire something different than other contemporary art. They stir something in many of us. They show us a secret language, an instinct and a willingness to let go. Something many of us understands though certain experiences. I don’t think it matters what age or era.
I'd like to think.
Top: Rick Griffin, 1968; Second: Among the best-known San Francisco poster designers was Wes Wilson, "Moby Grape, Chambers Brothers, Winterland/Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco," 1967; Third: Bonnie MacLean designs were highly inspired by Wes Wilson. She was the wife of Bill Graham, a music promoter who arranged for bands to play at the Avalon Ballroom and Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco. Wes Wilson bailed when he realized he was getting a fraction of what Bill Graham was making from his poster designs; Fourth: Poster by the incredibly freaky creative Lee Conklin for the August-September 1968 shows at San Francisco’s Fillmore West. Lastly: Alton Kelley in collaboration with Stanley Mouse were inspired by a nineteenth century engraving and created this well-known Grateful Dead poster, 1966.