If someone were to show you these album covers, or these posters...
Even if you've never heard of the bands featured,
you’d probably be able to guess what kind of music they play.
This style has become synonymous with the psychedelic '60s.
But these abstract forms, and curly, barely legible lettering —
they weren’t created in the 1960s.
They came from a celebrated art movement — one that started almost a century earlier.
In the late 1800s, new technology — electrical power, telephones, cars —
was changing the way the world worked. And the way it looked.
And some people, especially artists, living through this technological revolution were...
not so into all the new industry. To be blunt, they thought it was ugly.
Out of this conflict, a new global artistic movement was born
One that went by many different names.
Like the Secessionists in Austria and the Glasgow school in Scotland.
But you might know it as: Art Nouveau, which literally means “new art” in French.
Its creators wanted to make art that reflected the vibrancy of city life.
They used flat, decorative patterns,
feminine figures, and organic and plant motifs,
often stylized with fluid, abstract forms. And they applied this new visual language
to just about everything - from architecture to paintings to textiles and beyond.
Because they believed that aesthetics should go hand in hand with utility.
And no object was too mundane to be beautiful.
Like this entrance to the Paris subway.
Or these posters by Alphonse Mucha - advertising champagne and biscuits which are just as much about
being beautiful as they are about conveying information.
Okay, back to the hippies.
Like the late 1800s, the 1960s were a time of cultural upheaval.
ARCHIVE: “The Vietnam struggle goes on” ARCHIVE: “We want the Beatles”
ARCHIVE: “The Beatles everybody” In the US, the epicenter of this change was
San Francisco, where hundreds of thousands of young people descended upon the city.
For things like protests, and drum circles,
and of course, concerts.
Lots and lots and lots of concerts.
Particularly dance concerts, featuring trippy, psychedelic music
from bands like Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead.
And there was one major way to get people to come to your concert:
A good poster.
Back then, these now iconic bands were just starting out, playing back to back shows at
venues like the Fillmore and the Avalon And to advertise this new generation of hippie
bands, those venues knew that plain typeface and a grayscale photo just wasn’t going
to cut it.
So they commissioned work from a small group of artists, who developed a brand-new formula
for concert posters.
One that pulled from a variety of established design traditions - comic books, surrealism,
and, of course, art nouveau.
By the mid-60s, art nouveau was already experiencing a bit of a resurgence.
Especially when it came to textiles - dynamic, floral designs were a natural fit for the
hippie aesthetic.
Which is probably why in 1965, a museum just outside of San Francisco launched this exhibit.
Legend says this is where some of those designers were first exposed to Art Nouveau.
One designer, Wes Wilson, told Time Magazine that he admired their “idea of really putting
it out there.”
And when they started making new concert posters, these designers took those art nouveau staples
— and turned the dial up.
Art nouveau is famous for its feminine figures - most often nude, with flowing hair, and
a “come hither” glance.
A style the psychedelic designers clearly picked up on.
Look at the way these posters are covered edge to edge with detailed, two dimensional
illustrations.
Particularly flowers, and abstract curves,
And, also peacocks - that’s an art nouveau thing, too.
They… loved peacocks And sometimes, psychedelic designers would
use images pulled directly from an art nouveau poster — but always with a radically different
color palette.
Instead of art nouveau’s soft pastels.
psychedelic artists opted for intense, high-contrast colors,
said to make your eyes “vibrate”; a reference to the “visual experiences of
an LSD tripper.”
And that curly, cloudy, barely legible font?
It started here… on a 1902 poster by Austrian designer Alfred Roller.
In the 60s, artists adapted the bold, dynamic typeface and pushed it even further - softening
its lines and obscuring its edges.
Making it nearly illegible.
Which served a purpose.
It was meant to grab your attention and keep you interested - at least for as long as it
took to figure out what the poster was trying to tell you.
The result was a ton of posters that looked like art nouveau on acid.
As the music of San Francisco spread throughout the world,
so did the aesthetic.
In part because posters are easy to own and reproduce and collect.
With fans sometimes tearing them down immediately after they were put up.
The artists behind them even became celebrities in their own right - a few of them got their
own spread in Life Magazine.
The posters they made — their vibrating colors and winding lines — capture the energy
of the 1960s.
Just like the art nouveau ones represent the late 1800s.
And while these two time periods don’t mirror each other perfectly,
both movements were able to create something that captured the feeling of a changing world.
And their art reflected that.