Psychedelic poster history: Artistic Influences on the Psychedelic Poster Movement Style
Excerpted from “A History of Graphic Design”, Second Edition, by Philip B. Meggs, 1992, Van Nostrand Reinhold, NY
The graphics movement that expressed this cultural climate drew from a number of resources: the flowing sinuous curves of Art Nouveau, the intense optical color vibration associated with the brief Op Art movement popularized by a Museum of Modern Art exhibition, and the recycling of images from popular culture or by manipulation (such as reducing continuous-tone images to high-contrast black and white) that was prevalent in Pop Art.
Many of the initial artists in this movement were largely self-taught, and their primary clients were rock-and-roll concert and dance promoters. These dances were intense perceptual experiences of loud music and light shows that dissolved the environment with throbbing fields of projected color and bursting strobes. This experience was paralleled graphically in posters using swirling forms and lettering warped and bent to the edge of illegibility, frequently printed in close-valued complementary colors. ..Robert Wesley “Wes” Wilson (b. 1937), evidences the Art Nouveau style of swirling lines and letterforms, which are variants of Alfred Roller’s Art Nouveau alphabet…Wilson was the innovator of this style and created many of the stronger images. According to newspaper reports, respectable and intelligent businessmen were unable to decipher the lettering on these posters, yet they communicated well enough to fill auditoriums with a younger generation. Other prominent members of this brief movement included Kelly/Mouse Studios and Victor Moscoso (b.1936), the only major artist of the style with formal art training.
