The Joint Show: High Art in the Summer of Love

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The Sixties A Journal of History, Politics and Culture

ISSN: 1754-1328 (Print) 1754-1336 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rsix20

The Joint Show: high art in the Summer of Love

Scott B. Montgomery

To cite this article: Scott B. Montgomery (2018) The JointShow: high art in the Summer of Love, The Sixties, 11:2, 183-222, DOI: 10.1080/17541328.2018.1532171 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17541328.2018.1532171

Published online: 14 Nov 2018.

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Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rsix20 THE SIXTIES 2018, VOL. 11, NO. 2, 183–222 https://doi.org/10.1080/17541328.2018.1532171

ARTICLE The Joint Show: high art in the Summer of Love Scott B. Montgomery

University of Denver, Denver, CO, USA

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS The Joint Show was the first significant exhibition of posters Big Five; counterculture; Rick and counterculture art in a reputable art gallery. Held July- Griffin; Joint Show; Alton September 1967 at the Walter Moore Gallery in San Kelley; Victor Moscoso; Francisco, it showcased artwork by Wes Wilson, Rick Griffin, Stanley Mouse; poster; psychedelic art; Wes Wilson Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley, and Victor Moscoso. Examining the conception, preparation, contents, opening, and press coverage, this article pieces together the details of this significant, but unexplored exhibition. Its role as manifesto of counterculture art and the psychedelic poster movement is argued and its legacy is explored, particularly the formula- tion of a cannon of Big Five poster artists.

Introduction

“The Hippies made their deepest penetration of the current campaign on Monday night . . . (but eventually were thrown back without loss of faith on either side). By the hundreds, they poured into the heart of Straightville – by foot, via bus, on hogs, in psychedelically painted VWs, in buses so ancient they might have seen service in the First Battle of the Marne. Bells tinkled, beads jangled, beards bristled, plumes waved in the salubrious evening overcast. In all, a brave sight, and no fuzz around to tighten up the scene (San Francisco, I Love You). Their target: The Moore Gallery, an Establishment institution on Sutter between Mason and Powell. The reason: a preview of a show by the leaders of the Hippie Academy of Applied Art – Wes Wilson, Mighty Mouse, Moscoso, Griﬃn, Kelley.”1 Thus observed the San Francisco Chronicle’s Herb Caen in his coverage of the July 17, 1967 opening reception of the Joint Show. Characterizing it as a Hippie invasion, Caen’s cheeky commentary reveals the tension at the heart of the Joint Show: the artists’ close alignment with the irreverence of the counterculture set against their aspiration to artistic recognition within the mainstream artistic world. This dance between a counterculture antiestablishment sensibility and the desire for success within the art establishment was complicated. The Joint Show was the boldest and most fully articulated expression of this split personality of the poster

movement. It was not only hippies invading the downtown art world, it was psychedelic art occupying the gallery. In January of that year, a column in the San Francisco Chronicle had observed “When posters survive 50 years, they become works of art and are then solemnly displayed in museums.”2 Made in reference to the 1965 exhibition of Jugenstil work held at the UC Berkeley art gallery, the remark could just as well apply to the 1960s psychedelic poster movement in San Francisco. Indeed, 2017 – the 50-year anniversary of the fabled Summer of Love – saw now-classic posters prominently displayed in a number of august Bay Area museums and institutions, including the De Young Museum.3 A sampling of the posters is part of the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Louvre, to mention but two. The psychedelic poster is increasingly recognized as a form of countercultural high art of the later 1960s and early 1970s.4 The posters have become highly collectable, with some commanding astronomical prices at auctions from Ebay to Christie’s. This belated acclaim is partly the legacy of the Joint Show. Early manifestations of the style appeared in 1965 with sundry Acid Test ﬂiers and most famously George Hunter and Michael Ferguson’s “The Seed” design for the Charlatans residency at the Red Dog Saloon in June 1965. But it was not until early 1966 that the phenomenon of culturally distinct poster art began to bloom. In February 1966, both rock promoter Bill Graham’s concerts at the Fillmore and the Family Dog’s events inaugurated two poster series that would come to deﬁne the movement. By late 1966, both the Family Dog and Bill Graham realized that these were not merely advertisements; they were commissioning works of art. Thus began the “classic phase” of sophisticated, engaging, and artistically aspirant psychedelic poster art. This art movement entered its mature stage by 1967. The popular, but critically ignored Joint Show made the most vociferous case for this new art form. It was the psychedelic equivalent of the famous 1913 “Armory Show,” which brought daring modernist works by Marcel Duchamp and others to New York City audiences, for the new art movement.5 As I argue below, the Joint Show proclaimed the ascendancy of the poster renaissance, capping its initial evolutionary phase with an insurgent push into the establishment art world. Equally important, its impact on the study of poster art was profound, as it helped to canonize the “Big Five” poster artists featured in the show. Given its key role in the evolution of the psychedelic poster movement, it is striking that the Joint Show has received only cursory mention in the literature on psychedelic poster art and the counterculture’s artistic aspirations.6 Mixing praise and condescension, Caen refers to the poster artists as an art academy (“Hippie Academy of Applied Art”). Joking aside, the moniker does THE SIXTIES 185

emphasize the Joint Show’sunified artistic vision, akin to an academy. The show’s implied statement that this was a legitimate art movement led by its own academy does not seem to have been lost on Caen. Defining an art movement is aslipperything.Doingsomaybeeasywhenaself-defined movement pens a manifesto to spell out its vision, but such instances are rare. More often, notions of artistic unity are inferred or attributed. Most artistic movements define themselves less through words and more through visual characteristics, working methods, and even exhibition history. Perhaps we can agree on a general definition of an art movement as a group of artists working within a specific time and place (with an identifiable hey-day and center) pursuing common aesthetic and cultural goals with similar tendencies of subject and style. By this common-sense standard, the psychedelic poster renaissance qualifies as a legitimate art movement. A discernible group of artists within the San Francisco countercultural scene during the mid-to-late 1960s (and onward) worked closely together (and sometimes in direct collaboration) to formulate a rich, sensuous, vibrant psychedelic aesthetic. Seen in this light, the Joint Show was itself something of a manifesto – an experiential declaration of the identity and goals of a group of similar artists. No written statement was necessary. The poster renaissance defining this movement spoke for itself. At least that seems to have been the implicit argument of the Joint Show. In concept and execution, the Joint Show presented itself as a bona-fide art event – an exhibition of New High Art. In doing so, it valorized a countercultural aesthetic in the same language and ritual of display that the older, dominant, “straight” culture used to assert and legitimize its own hegemony – the art exhibition. Psychedelic imagery was not wholly unknown in the art world, as it infused aspects of Dada, Surrealism, and postwar American Pop Art. But the art of the emerging psychedelic counterculture was yet to be noticed within the greater world of art galleries and criticism. The Joint Show was not just the art world going psychedelic, but was also the psychedelic world going art. High culture was infiltrated and appropriated in the service of a countercultural imperative, and an exhibition of mostly graphic work became not only a media-based assertion of legitimacy (poster artists as artists and posters as art) but also a countercultural aesthetic manifesto.

Origins The Joint Show was initiated by the Moore Gallery, which approached the ﬁve poster artists with the idea of a collective exhibition.7 Wes Wilson, one of its central artists, recalls:

“[T]his fellow who was a friend of the Moore’s. I can’t recollect his name. I think he knew the people who wrote the article in the California Living magazine about the 186 S. B. MONTGOMERY

posters. . . . He thought it would be a good idea to have a show at a gallery. . . I think I was the first person he contacted. . . . He kind of decided on who would be in the show, all of us together. This fellow thought it would be nice to have the five of us. We were kind of the main poster artists at the time.”8 If the idea for the show came from the art world, its clever, punning title came from the drug-infused counterculture. “Joint Show” was suggested by Gail Moscoso, wife of the artist Victor Moscoso. “We were like fringe people,” he explained. “That was a straight gallery. The gallery would never have come up with anything like that. They were too straight.”9 The show began to take shape in the late Spring of 1967, when the gallery contacted Wes Wilson. Already the subject of media profiles, Wilson was the most well-known poster artist at the time.10 They discussed the idea of a collective show and settled on five major artists. There was an existing camaraderie among this group, all of whom had worked for the concert production company Family Dog. Wilson had recently had an acrimonious split with promoter Bill Graham, the irascible owner of the Fillmore, San Francisco’s premier venue for psychedelic acts like the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane. Wilson caricatured Graham in the guise of a fascistic capitalist snake in his final poster for the promoter in May 1967, just as plans for the Joint Show were being hatched.11 The other artists also had fraught relationships with Graham, and this may have influenced their selection. By the time of the Joint Show’s founding, few had any dealings with the rock promoter. The selection of the five artists for the show may have been based on the personalities involved, yet these artists became lionized as the leading lights of the movement, revealing how precarious and arbitrary “canon” formation can be. In hindsight, the absence of Bonnie MacLean from the Joint Show is striking. The occasional, misguided placement of her on a purported “second tier” of psychedelic poster artists is in part the result of her absence from the Joint Show – an exclusion that had less to do with her artistic abilities and more to do with her relationship to Bill Graham, whom she married on June 11, shortly before the opening of the Joint Show. She thus occupied a difficult position vis-a-vis the rival factions surrounding Graham. It also seems likely that MacLean’s exclusion from the “boys club” reflected the sexual politics of the day. To paraphrase poster expert, Mike Storeim, “if Bonnie MacLean had been male, there would be a Big Six.” As an employee at the Fillmore, Bonnie MacLean had been responsible for the temporary painted announcements in the lobby. These used lettering and stylistic elements similar to those of Wilson. Despite having designed one of the early Fillmore posters in April of 1966, MacLean did not begin regular poster production until May 1967, in the direct aftermath of Wilson’s fight with Graham. Producing the lion’s share of Fillmore posters through August, Maclean was indeed one of the most visible poster THE SIXTIES 187

artists on the scene at the time of the Joint Show. But, in truth, she had not fully emerged as a major poster artist when the Joint Show was in the planning stages. The Joint Show was held in a reputable downtown contemporary art gallery. At 535 Sutter Street, the Moore Gallery was a block from Union Square, an upscale part of the city attracting well-heeled residents and tourists.12 Opened in 1966 by Jean and Norman Moore, art collectors from Woodside, California, the gallery showcased the owners’ passion for contemporary Latin American art.13 Their interest in new art and graphic work from outside the old, established art world traditions inﬂuenced their support of the Joint Show endeavor. Like all exhibitions, the Joint Show not only displayed the work of the artists but also projected the gallery’s own evolving position within the artworld. The artists were asserting their legitimacy, while the gallery was asserting its own voice at a moment when a paradigmatic shift was underway in the worlds of art and art commerce. A press release issued by San Francisco’s Grover Sales Jr. public relations ﬁrm at 916 Kearney Street in San Francisco on June 29, 1967, marked “for immediate release,” announced that “Psychedelic Art’s Top Five Have ‘Joint Show’ at Moore Gallery, Monday, July 17.” The statement asserts the novelty of the event and the primacy of the featured artists, who came to be known as “The Big Five.” It also provides the most clearly articulated statement of the exhibit’s intent.

“The five artists who initiated the new style of dance poster art will exhibit their original works for the first time in a “Joint Show” opening Monday, July 17, at the Moore Gallery, 535 Sutter Street, San Francisco. The ‘top five’ in the world of psychedelic art – Rick Griffin, Kelley, Victor Moscoso, Stanley Mouse and Wes Wilson – will exhibit, in addition to their original poster designs, a variety of paintings, seriographs, tempura (sic), collage and drawings. This is the first time their original art work has been collated for a major public showing. The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York is arranging for a show of their work in the near future. All five of the artists, whose influence on contemporary design has been incalculable, are residents of the San Francisco Bay Area and range in age from 23 to 30 years. RICK GRIFFIN, youngest of the “Joint Show,” began his career drawing for a Los Angeles surfing magazine. He left art school and went to Mexico where he evolved his personal style. His work is frequently seen on the cover of Oracle. KELLY (sic), an original member of the Family Dog (entrepreneurs of the San Francisco rock-dance scene) attended art school at Yale and has spent 2 ½ years drawing dance posters. VICTOR MOSCOSO, who calls his style ‘contemporary eclectic,’ studied at Yale with Albers and Lebrun and at the San Francisco Art Institute with Diebenkorn, Bischoff and Oliveira. STANLEY MOUSE, a partner of KELLY (sic) in the Mouse-Kelly studios, began his career in Los Angeles, airbrush- ing monster figures on sweatshirts. WES WILSON, born in Sacramento, was grad- uated in philosophy at San Francisco State College. He started painting as a child, but spent only one year in art school. TIME magazine has commissioned him to draw a cover.” 188 S. B. MONTGOMERY

In keeping with the conventions of art-related press releases, emphasis is placed on the artists’ background and the place of the show in the traditions of the art world. The Gallery’soﬃcial account of the artists’ pedigree is echoed by critic Thomas Albright. He too names the participating artists and provides short bios stressing their artistic training.14 Both accounts pay attention to the institutions and mentors that underscore the “artistic legitimacy” of the artists.

Materials and contents The Joint Show was unique not only in its placement in a reputable commercial gallery, but also in how it utilized the material culture and accoutrements of formal art exhibitions. This included a colorful, sensuous invitation designed by Wes Wilson (Figure 1). The design sets the psychedelic tone of the event through its strident colors, organic linear sensibility, patterns that morph into faces, and lettering whose meaning is subverted by mirror-imaging – characteristics of Wilson’s pioneering style. Like an altarpiece, the brightly colored wings open to reveal Bob Seidemann’s group photo of the five poster artists flanked by surprisingly pedestrian text that gives the details of the exhibition (Figure 2).15 The triptych format nods to the formal qualities of a proper art exhibition. Yet the shifting outside view subverts any clarity, as the image seems to morph in a sensuous ebb and flow of line, color, and suggested body parts. Seidemann’s photo shows the five artists looking uncharacteristically severe. As friend and fellow poster artist Raphael (Bob) Schnepf recounts, “That photograph of them – that was taken while they were negotiating that show. And the reason they all have that tough look on their face is

Figure 1. Wes Wilson. Joint Show invitation - closed. 1967. Copyright Wes Wilson. THE SIXTIES 189

Figure 2. Wes Wilson. Joint Show invitation - open. 1967. Copyright Wes Wilson.

they were telling the owner of the gallery . . . The owner of the gallery was saying that he wanted them to get forty percent and he would get sixty percent. Victor, with everyone behind him, said ‘No, you’re going to get forty percent and we’re going to get sixty percent.’ Not like a bargain, like ‘this is the way it’s gonna be.’ In the picture they look a little threatening. They’re making a stand. Victor said that was actually the mood they were in . . . and Seidemann is hip enough to catch the moment.”16 These invitations to the preview opening were sent to the gallery’sregular mailing list, comprised predominantly of art collectors, aficionados, and socialites. “The gallery itself worked out all that stuff. They did the PR. They had a PR company (Grover Sales Jr.).”17 The list was expanded for the Joint Show, with inclusions such as Wes Wilson’s mother and the parents of Bob Weir, guitarist for the Grateful Dead.18 Additional invites doubtless went out to the denizens of the Haight-Ashbury, either via official invitation or word of mouth. The opening’s cross-section of “cultures” was in part the result of this bifurcated guest list. The Moore Gallery also reached out to the counterculture, running an ad for the show in the July 14, 1967 issue of the Berkeley Barb, a Bay Area underground newspaper.19 Documentation of the show itself is sparse. Decades later, Wes Wilson recalled the diversity of the material exhibited: “It was an interesting show. An interesting variety of work. We each had a section of wall for our stuff. Victor had quite a bunch and Kelley had some and Mouse had some with cars, comics and stuff and Rick had some stuff from L.A. with surfer dudes and a lot of comic stuff. It was quite a show really.”20 He lists the work that he exhibited: “I did one of the posters and I had some paintings and some of the original artwork. That was it, some drawings and things like that. Some of them were for the posters and some were separate drawings. Smallish drawings. I had a sketchbook that I kind of tore out a few 190 S. B. MONTGOMERY

pages for the show. We all put in whatever we could. I didn’t have a big backlog of stuff in those days.”21 One day before the show’s opening, Albright published a piece in the Art section of the San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle that offered an early analysis of psychedelic poster art accompanied by several photographs of works in the show.22 Beneath the headline caption (“A Psychedelic Flowering”), are (uncredited) individual photos of Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelley (mislabeled “Kelly”)and one of Moscoso, Griffin and Wilson together. At the bottom of page 26, captioned “Psychedelic Art by Kelly (sic), GriffinandMouse,” are representative pieces by each. None of Moscoso’sworksareillustrated in Albright’s review, but given his dismissive assessment of Moscoso’s drawings as “sadomasochist pulp pop,” this is not surprising.23 In one of the few descriptions of the show’s arrangement of images, the Berkeley Barb notes “on the walls behind them were Kelly’s(sic) collages; ten cut-outs from the real world made more real, ranging from the nuclear hell that hangs behind the White House to the soft tones of sweet bodies out of time.”24 A few of Kelley’s collages are visible on the wall behind the artists in the photograph that accompanies Albright’s account of the press conference, a week before the opening.25 Misspelling Kelley’s name (as does virtually all press coverage of the exhibit), Albright lavishes praise on his collage work.26 With disembodied hands hovering above a mountai- nous landscape and a surreal pumpkin face in the foreground, it is similar in concept and execution to the poster that he designed for the show. In contrast, Mouse’s drawing is a whimsical riot of thickly shaded abstract forms protruding from a bemused male head. Griffin’s drawing is a composite of a train engine watering a base that is emblazoned with cursive script that reads “Abuela Abuelo y tu Madre!” (Grandmother, grandfather, and your mother!), sounding like an insult. This is framed laterally by four coins, and sheltered by a great overhanging roof emblazoned with “The Garbanzo.” In style and imagery, it is very much in keeping with Griffin’s early posters in their utilization of images and typeface that evoke circus side-shows, old Americana, and a nineteenth century drawing style. Albright’s article also includes a piece entitled “Painting by Wes Wilson.” Combining sensuous line, ambiguous space, and the female form, in style and imagery it is close to many of his rock posters, including notable examples from the Spring of 1967.27 Like the poster he designed for the exhibition, the painting shows Wilson working in a well-established mature style. Artist Raphael Schnepf recalls being impressed by “a cluster of Wes Wilson drawings, maybe ten or twelve of them just all kind of in a rectangle. . . . Wes Wilson always worked a little bit smaller, actually quite a bit smaller, in his paintings so that his line had character and when he blew THE SIXTIES 191 it up it had dimension and so he could fill it in with a lot of color. So there were these little groupings of his drawings and I was so surprised because I had no idea he worked so small.”28 But not all of the work was small. There were also sizeable pieces, particularly the five large posters designed for the Joint Show. With the smaller works, such as Wilson’s paintings and Kelley’s collages, hung at a lower level to allow them to be scrutinized, the larger works tended to be hung higher. Schnepf recalls that Stanley Mouse’s very large vertical- format poster for the lobby of the Western Front dancehall was particularly impressive hanging high up on a wall.29 Albright’s piece is a crucial printed source in reconstructing the Joint Show. In a review published several days later, he offers an extensive and thoughtful examination of the show:

“The Moore, with original poster proofs, drawings, collages and oils all over the walls, looks a little like the Haight Street Print Mint. From this montage emerge, in my estimation, two major talents: Rick Griﬃn and (Alton) Kelly (sic).

Griﬃn is psychedelic art’s great revivalist, bringing the spirit of the Mother Lode playbill, Barnum & Bailey circus poster and 19th century illustration up to date in representations of hashish pipes, a ‘Can-A-Bliss’ growing marijuana plant and specially for the show, the wildest cigarette package you’ve ever seen, sprouting the twisted tips of three hand-rolled smokes and subtitled ‘A Rare Blend.’ Griﬃn uses all the great old type faces – Gold Rush, Bank Note, P. T. Barnum and Jim Crow Old Bowery – with color often adding an op shimmer. He’s an excellent technician in a graphic style alternating between, or combining, Gustave Dore with Mad Magazine. Above all, his work shows that there is nothing at all static about rigid symmetry. And such prints as ‘In God We Trust’–the dollar bill’s Great Seal, plus some mushrooms – suggest that what we today call ‘camp’ was simply the pop of another age.

Kelly’s (sic) métier is collage, which he us to create a psychedelic picture scrapbook of modern history – Marilyn Monroe pensively posed above a romp of bears, Muhammed Ali looming above an Alpine mountain against a foreground curve of bare white hips, John Lennon 2 and the Alps. Kelly’s (sic) juxtapositions and occasional double-images have their suggestion of Magritte, and they also parallel the revival of quick-cut montage in contemporary ﬁlm, the frolicking Beatles in ‘Hard Day’s Night.’ Essentially, they are a brilliant synthesis of surrealism and pop, with the eerie verisimilitude of a news photo out of the latest issue of ‘Look’ magazine.

Among the other three artists, Stanley Mouse displays a hairy, stuffed-buzzard inspiration in a pair of small drawings that slightly resemble early Klee; his griffin- like monsters and skulls hot-rodding on motorcycles and stripped-down engines hark back to Mouse’s early career painting sweatshirts. There is a fine self-portrait, a mothy bust behind an ornately framed glass jaggedly rent by a side-to-side crack.

Victor Moscoso’s poster work is distinguished mainly by its lettering, a combination of Islamic calligraphy and movie-palace Moorish revival. Figurative work shows his 192 S. B. MONTGOMERY

training with Nathan Oliveira and Rico Lebrun. His collages are sadomasochist pulp pop. For the most part, though, it strikes me that he has aptly described his own style –‘contemporary eclectic.’

Wes Wilson is Wes Wilson, but aside from a couple incisive pen sketches, he is represented mostly by black and white poster layouts. This is a little like an unorchestrated Mahler symphony – perhaps of historical value, but a long way from the real thing.”30

Albright is conspicuously dismissive of Wilson’s original drawings for his posters, which today might be seen as highlights of any exhibition of his work. This presumably comes from the assumption that, as preparatory designs, they are considered ephemeral, despite the fact that they are closer to the artist’s hand than the final product. What is curious is that these reviews do not make much note of the original posters designed by the artists specifically for the Joint Show, which ultimately became the most lasting mementos of the exhibit. A unique feature of the Joint Show was the presentation of material from all aspects of the printing process – from original drawings to final posters, and everything in between. While media art critics did not pick up on this aspect of the show, it appealed to the artists and printers, as well as to the broader countercultural spirit of inclusion. As a poster artist, Raphael Schnepf was struck by the emphasis on the printing process:

“I remember being thoroughly impressed with the fact that the printers were getting their due. Because the printers had not been getting their due at all. Nobody was paying attention to these guys who were changing the world of printing. They were being as heroic and innovative as the artists. . . . [S]ome of the printers were actually there that night and they were so excited because they got to be the stars of the show. Above the artworks, there were the plates and negatives up on the wall . . . above the actual original art a lot of the time. There were a lot of originals and a lot of step-by-step, considering what it was – a gallery show. . . . There was at least one or two areas where they had plates and film-work above the pieces, so you could get an idea of how you went from drawing to poster and then up above were the intermediate steps – negatives and the flats and the plates. . . . They had a couple of progressives where you saw the first ink, and then the first and second ink, and then the third added to that. . . . Up until that time, people probably didn’t even realize the process.”31

Ted Streshinky's photograph of Griffin and Kelley standing in front of a wall that features a series of progressives of Griffin’s Joint Show poster was taken inside the exhibit. The inclusion of this process material appears to have been largely the idea of the artists, as they were both more aware of the process and more inclined to acknowledge the role of printers within it. While we do not know who decided how this process material would actually be hung, its inclusion fits within the counterculture spirit of THE SIXTIES 193

collective creation, more so than the so-called “straight” gallery, as Moscoso termed it. Though the Joint Show only featured five poster artists, the gallery space also showed works by several other artists unaffiliated with the poster movement. Sculptures by Gerhard Nicholson, paintings by Ralph Chessé, and light-in-motion by Richard William Leonard were also on display, as noted on Wilson’s invitation. This was the decision of the gallery. Moscoso recalls: “They threw in a couple of other people who had no business being in that show. They used the come-on of our work to show off someoftheirartists....Irememberthinking‘who are these guys?’ They didn’t belong there. They had nothing to do with the psychedelia or the world of psychedelics. The damn gallery just shoved them in there.”32 Wilson reflects, “Thosewerepeoplemaybewhothey [the gallery] just wanted to include in the show or were left from other shows or something. We had nothing to do with them. They [the artists] werenotthere[attheopening].”33 Ralph Chessé (1900–1991) was an actor, puppeteer and Social Realist painter of the California Labor School who had worked on WPA projects, notably as one of twenty- six artists who painted murals in Coit Tower in 1934.34 At age sixty- seven, Chessé was considerably older than the poster artists.35 Gerhard Nicholson (born 1930) was a sculptor, best known as a “Junk Artist” who turned found objects into works of art.36 The gallery seems to have envisioned some sort of “low-brow” affinity between his funky, assembled sculptures and Kelley’s richly assembled collages. The inclusion of these additional artists reveals how the Joint Show operated within the normal world of gallery politics. Recently, a short reel has come to light that contains two minutes of film from an unidentified TV featurette on hippie posters. Bookended between footage of Wes and Eva Wilson talking about hippies and posters as art is footage of the Joint Show’s opening.37 The silent footage, overdubbed with “Sweet Lorraine” by Country Joe and the Fish, who played at the event, shows a densely packed gallery. The shaky film reveals a crowd packed elbow-to-elbow. The wide variety of people about which Caen makes ado in his review is apparent. The clip provides a glimpse of some of the art and its arrangement on the walls. What we can see are various paintings, drawings, collages, and poster drawings – all framed as art. Immediately upon entering, the gallery on the left wall were several framed pieces, followed by Wilson’s and Griffin’s Joint Show posters. This extended along the left wall to include a full run of the printing plates, color proofs, and variants of Griffin’s poster. Additional Joint Show posters and materials were displayed on this wall. Further along the wall are a large painting, Griffin’s drawing for the “Independence Ball” poster, and a series of drawings and collages.38 On the right wall are several poster drawings, 194 S. B. MONTGOMERY

including Mouse, Kelley and Michael Bowen’s Human Be-In design and Griffin’s Can-a-blis. Further in are several smaller framed pieces and one larger painting. Still further along this wall can be seen the drawing for Wilson’s The Sound poster, which appears at the base of the stairway to the upper level.39 Other works are visible, including sculpture by Gerhard Nicholson and paintings by Ralph Chessé. If the show’s primary goal was to legitimize this art, the gallery and the artists shared another goal: to sell inventory. Wilson remembers, “Basically, getting out there and making more money with our art. That was our hope. Get a little more publicity, name recognition across the country.”40 Respect brings sales, as does the concept of “collectability.” The Joint Show recognized this and engaged in several tactics to promote the idea that psychedelic art objects were collectibles. One such idea was the gallery’s creation of a special “collector package.” Part collector’s souvenir and part artists’ promotion packet, it came in a large Zig-Zag rolling paper container. Wilson recalls: “We each did a little something to put into a package, and so pasted together something for that. So we put together a kind of collector package. They printed up the container for it that looked like a cigarette paper holder for joints.”41 Inside was a copy of the invitation, postcards of the artists’ work, and individual “bio” pages of the artists involved in the show. In addition to Seidemann’s group photo, each of the eight artists was given a page in which his “bio” was variously expressed in words, pictures, and drawings, such as Rick Griffin’s reprisal of his popular Mescalito print and his “Renaissance or Die” foldout from the San Francisco Oracle.42 The creation of this limited-run “program” for the exhibition was unique in the San Francisco scene. Some of this no doubt reflected the influence of the Moore Gallery, but Moscoso recalls it as an appropriately joint concept, which came initially from Kelley.43 Programs were not common for the California dance concerts, though they would later become part of the New York scene at the Fillmore East. The Joint Show program was part of something more elevated, formal, and “respectable”–the art world. The program focused attention on the artists, but the oblique manner in which surreal photos and drawings were used to illustrate the artists’ biographies was very much in keeping with the counterculture’s sense of whimsy. Each Joint Show invitation package also included a varied selection of postcards from the BG (Bill Graham – Fillmore Auditorium) and FD (Family Dog – Avalon Ballroom) posters series, featuring designs by artists in the exhibition.44 The postcards represent a good sampling of their work. While all are designs for concert posters, the artistry is emphasized and not the concert itself. Their inclusion in the Joint Show portfolio is a statement of artistic validity rather than a lionization of the rock poster per se. The poster designs sampled range from a year to two weeks prior to THE SIXTIES 195

the Joint Show opening, illustrating that the poster movement was both well-established (albeit recently) and dynamic – vibrant, progressing, and ﬂourishing. Taken as a whole, it serves as a “psychedelic resumé” for ﬁve artists riding the crest of the poster wave that they themselves had put in motion.

The posters Each of the five featured artists designed a poster specifically for the Joint Show. Printed in large format at approximately 22”x28”, the posters were intended to impress by their sheer scale. Wilson’s extra-large design expanded to roughly 25”×37”–an imposing size for any poster. The Joint Show designs were printed in five variations on four distinct surfaces, ranging from glossy coated and matte vellum stock to silver and gold foil.45 The printing of the same design in multiple versions, while not common among psychedelic posters, did have some precedent. Wes Wilson’s “The Sound” poster from September-October 1966 had been printed in three differently colored versions.46 The printing of multiple versions of the posters encouraged collecting, very much in keeping with the marketing strategies of the gallery world. The first variant of the glossy stock Joint Show print carries the notation “Edition of 1200” suggesting the collectability of a limited edition. Not just stand-alone posters, they create a set of five that could be acquired and displayed together, fashioning further joint identity for the group. The Moore Gallery also printed a run of the posters on glossy stock around August 1967, presumably intended for post- exhibition sale by the gallery.47 The posters are not rock-related and remove the poster from the role of advertising an event or business. They do not even advertise the Joint Show per se, but instead are part of it. As a result, the posters become essentially about themselves. By extension, they are not really made for commerce but instead as commerce – as commercial products. Within this commercial identity was an artistic statement as well. Commerce, yes, but a commerce of art. The Joint Show foregrounded the “artistic argument” of the poster artists, ultimately making the assertion – including through the posters’ sale – that this is legitimate art within the standards of the art world. The sale of the posters extended beyond the gallery. A Berkeley Barb summer issue ran an ad for “Posters from the Joint Show. Limited 1st edition. Only 1000 copies. On sale now. $2.50 each. $10.00 set of five.Shakespeare&Company, 2499 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley.”48 The following year, a small volume entitled The Great Poster Trip: Eureka! noted that the posters were “available in local stores” and also offered them for mail-order sale. Most of the Fillmore and Avalon posters were priced at $1.25. The Joint Show posters sold for $2.75, comparable to other large format posters.49 As commercial products, the Joint 196 S. B. MONTGOMERY

Show posters were priced in accordance with all other contemporary posters, including photographic prints. Cost notwithstanding, they were not exactly flying off the shelf, as Wilson notes: “The Joint Show posters didn’tselltoowell. After the show, the Moore Gallery kept the bulk of the posters printed on vellum and this and that. And later I kept hearing of people buying them. And I never got a dime from those. And I left a really nice ink original artwork for BG- 55 or one of the BG-50s (Spring 1967). They wanted to keep it there because even though they had changed to a different show they wanted to keep sending notices to people who hadn’tbeenabletomakeittotheshow.Andthatwas never returned to me. So, I was really ripped off by the gallery in the end there.”50 Wilson notes, somewhat ruefully, that the show “was successful for the gallery. They really made a mint for themselves.”51 Rick Griffin’s Joint Show poster design captures the show’s double- entendre. An immense cigarette pack, complete with triad of protruding joints, hovers with great sculptural presence within a bold, space-less expanse (Figure 3). The large words “Joint Show” and subtle placement of two marijuana leaf designs on the package seal at the top leave no doubt

Figure 3. Rick Griﬃn. Joint Show poster. 1967. Copyright Rick Griﬃn. THE SIXTIES 197

as to the contents of these hand-rolled cigarettes. He transforms something everyday into something monumental and iconic. Griffin’s poster offers the counter-culturally-acceptable use of the Zig-Zag papers, as also implied by the invitation package. Punning on the show’s name, Griffin’s poster proudly proclaims the counterculture’s embrace of marijuana. This was not something that artists of the counterculture held back about.52 An interview, quoted by Albright in the pre-opening review, relates: “Mouse also says he found out ‘where it’s really at when I got stoned.’ Griffin said experiences with psychedelic drugs ‘intensified’ his visions, formerly inspired for the most part by ‘engravings in old books.’”53 The central image of a Bedouin man smoking a hand-rolled cigarette (clearly intended to invoke a joint), taken from a nineteenth-century engraving, was likely found in one such book.54 Beneath this hovering hippie flying carpet of a joint pack, the names of the five poster artists are joined in small, calligraphic lettering. No details of the exhibit’s date or location are given, removing this poster from the arena of advertising, and dropping it somewhere in between collectable souvenir and collectable art. In style, design, and visual referents, it is not far off from many of Griffin’s other designs. But Griffin’soffering for the show does not reach the dizzying heights of psychedelic imagery and epigraphy that he would soon develop and for which he is best known. Nonetheless, this simple countercultural icon reveals a significant shift in his art. Griffin was just then coming to the forefront of the poster movement, stepping up as a master of icons and intriguingly impenetrable lettering.55 Up to this point, his work had not on the whole been exceptional. His early designs, from the Summer of 1966 up to the Summer of 1967, largely consist of well-executed but not terribly imagi- native drawings of Old West imagery with countercultural inflection and only some indication of the dynamic lettering that he would later champion. It was at this moment that he developed his mature style. Griffin’s Independence Ball poster for July 4, 1967 festivities at the Avalon Ballroom, which took place less than two weeks before the Joint Show, reveals his move toward the iconic centering of simple but effective images.56 During this time, Griffin was working on the Charlatans triptych of posters, using Herb Green photos of the band as Old West outlaws to advertise concert runs at the Avalon Ballroom on May 26–28, June 22–25, and July 13–16.57 The third of these, made for shows scheduled for the weekend before the Joint Show opening, was executed by Robert Fried, likely because Griffin was finalizing things for the exhibition.58 In con- ceptualizing the triptych format, Griffin made the significant leap of introducing the idea of meta-composition into the poster design. Creating an image that can only be fully read when juxtaposed with other posters places a larger artistic mandate on the posters than their ostensible role in advertising discrete events.59 Similarly, his unique 198 S. B. MONTGOMERY

mastery of lettering was just beginning to crystalize at this time, with an early intimation of his sculpturally animate epigraphy visible in his (otherwise unfortunate) design for Big Brother and the Holding Company and Canned Heat at the Avalon Ballroom on June 8–11, 1967.60 At the time of the Joint Show, Griffin was just pulling together these various components. His Joint Show poster occupies a significant place in his oeuvre, effectively marking the culmination of his developmental phase and the transition into his full-blown, classic style. Griffin seems to have been on hiatus during the run of the Joint Show, but he returned soon thereafter with some of his most dazzling works of art, from the confoundingly illegible masterpiece collaboration with Moscoso for the Family Dog Denver in November 1967 to the bleeding heart for Quicksilver at the Avalon Ballroom in January 1968 and the iconic flying eyeball for Jimi Hendrix at the Fillmore in February 1968.61 In the bold presentation of the pack of Joint Show joints, Griffin presaged his signature use of powerful centralized iconic imagery that takes on a numinous presence, exemplified over a year later in the heart and torch poster for Big Brother & the Holding Company at the Fillmore in September 1968.62 Though occasionally overlooked

Figure 4. Stanley Mouse. Joint Show poster. 1967. Copyright Stanley Mouse. THE SIXTIES 199

within the scope of Griffin’s career, his Joint Show poster marks his passage from developing artist to undisputed master. Stanley Mouse’s poster offers a painting – a work of high art hung on the wall in an elaborate frame (Figure 4). He appropriates Anthony Van Dyck’s portrait of James II as a child and enlivens his unusual headdress with a mosaic of lysergic tesserae, suggesting royal mind-expansion. Mouse’s source image was itself lifted from van Dyck’s 1637 painting of the Three Eldest Children of Charles I (Galleria Sabauda, Turin). Mouse found a painted copy of the detail of James II holding an apple (at the far right of van Dyck’s portrait) and painted over the surface: “The Joint Show was a pairing of that painting of that boy holding an apple. I painted right over it. It was while I was still living in Detroit. I brought the painting to SF and used it for the art show.”63 He displayed both the painting and the offset lithographic poster derived from it at the Joint Show. Its origin in a “high art” painting is established via the faux frame – traditional art pressed into service for countercultural artistry. In the lower right, the title “Joint Show” is spelled out in the roach stubs of joints, perhaps the end of the pack offered in Griffin’s poster. This enigmatic fusion of traditional imagery, reworked with spatial ambiguity and countercultural reference, echoes many collaborative designs by Mouse and Kelley. However intriguing, Mouse’s Joint Show poster does not match his most iconic designs, and his consummate skill as a draftsman is not as apparent as it is in his other posters and drawings included in the show. The poster is more interesting as an assertion of artistic legitimacy than as a discrete work of art. At the bottom of the poster, text in an uninspired standard font notes that the artists “are having a Joint Show.” It is surprising to find Kelley’s name misspelled yet again here, this time by his close collaborator and friend. Mouse’s long-time artistic collaborator, Alton Kelley, plays to his strength as a collage artist, appropriating images and repurposing them within a psychedelic context of simple, yet carefully wrought compositions. As the scant reviews observe, Kelley’s collages were among the most noteworthy pieces in the show, and conceptually, his poster is close to these highly praised works.64 Kelley was at the top of his game as a collage and poster artist by this time. His Joint Show poster is among his more successful collage designs, and one of the show’s strongest pieces (Figure 5). A mountain vista opens up behind a succession of machinery gears, while a pair of disembodied hands floats in front of Gene Anthony’s photo of Pigpen of the Grateful Dead. Framed by the elusive text of “Joint Show” and illegible letter-like patterns, the collage mediates between surface design and a staccato recession of space achieved through overlaid collage forms. Its meaning is unclear, but its invitation to search for meaning is consistent with the artistic mandate of the psychedelic poster 200 S. B. MONTGOMERY

Figure 5. Alton Kelley. Joint Show poster. 1967. Copyright Alton Kelley.

artists. If Griffin’s design is the most iconic of the lot, Kelley’s is the most compositionally interesting of the show’s five posters. Victor Moscoso’s design is similar to Kelley’s in its reliance on layered collage imagery, with the rolling hills of a reclining female nude’ssoftpink flesh grounding a field of biomorphic red forms from which emerges a strong man, overprinted in pink and green. He simultaneously raises a baton while looking to the side and lowers it with a glance to the viewer. Behind, a stationary yet blurry green hilly landscape echoes the clear pink flesh ground, while two geese fly by, their clearly outlined motion both contrasting and reinforcing the strongman’s fuzzy appearance of movement. This seemingly simple overprinting of the strongman was part of Moscoso’searlyexperi- mentation with poster designs that seem to move. He was attempting to represent time, as the designs change under a lightbox that accentuates different color-concentrated poses of the figures.65 He had accidentally stumbled upon this technique with his poster for the Doors and the Sparrow at the Family Dog’s Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco on May 12–13, 1967.66 Moscoso’s first conscious four-dimensional poster came THE SIXTIES 201

a month later, in an advertisement for the Youngbloods and the Siegal Schwall Band at the Avalon Ballroom on June 15–18, 1967.67 For the Joint Show poster, Moscoso revisited the concept, again drawing from Edison. This, his third 4D design, is somewhat tentative, suggesting that he was still experimenting with the idea. Here he tried a two-color variation of pink and green, perhaps to facilitate its use with 3D movie glasses. Compared with his later, more fully developed 4D poster designs, Moscoso’s Joint Show image appears preliminary, revealing that the poster movement was still developing and exploring new ideas. Though most viewers at the Joint Show did not see or recognize its capacity to “move,” Moscoso’s piece was a signiﬁcant early step in the experimental development of the poster’s potential for genuine drama and surprise. The visually challenging lettering at the top spells out “Joint Show” both forward and backward – a device he used on other posters, such as his promo design for

Figure 6. Wes Wilson. Joint Show poster. 1967. Copyright Wes Wilson. 202 S. B. MONTGOMERY

KMPX radio.68 Like Griffin’s poster, Moscoso’s anticipates some of his most artistically audacious and adventurous work. In contrast to Griffin’s iconic clarity, Wes Wilson’s design relied on his signature use of dynamic lettering to shape bodies in mellifluous, undulat- ing line (Figure 6). Wilson explains its origins: “The poster was Eva sitting in a window. And I decided that I would just go on and put lettering all over it. At the same time I was doing these body stockings for this under- wear company in Philadelphia. They would put these body stockings on mannequins. . . . Anyway, so I got the idea and just put lettering on it over the figure. I kind of made up some of the words, you know, like ‘Pacific See.’ I just filled it up with words, artists, names.”69 Text undulates across her body, sensuously articulating its contours. The artist wraps “Wes Wilson” around his wife’s breasts, “Stanley Mouse” across her abdomen below, “Kelly” (sic) on her belly, and “cat” in her pubic region. “Rick Griffin” extends along her left thigh, moving down toward “in the flesh” on her left knee and “pax lex thru sex” on her adjacent right knee.70 “Victor Mosocoso” extends up her right arm, emerging from her ques- tioning (“yes or no”) hand that rests on the sill. Various other words fill the remaining space on her body, including “baby blue” extending down from her right underarm, “Lady MacBeth & Frodo” along the left shoulder, and “also Country Joe and the Fish” making up her folded right leg. Wrapping around her neck and extending downward as a pectoral, a poetic couplet offers: “A moments grace for all those who live on the razor’s edge. A new spectre for those alive on the shores of the Pacific See.”71 Wilson’s ode to this vision is delivered with a wordplay that echoes the whimsical relationship between text and image in the poster. The bodily-inscribed sensuosity is given a sacred veneer through a white halo that hovers behind her golden tresses, harmonizing with her placid face, and worthy of the peaceful blessing that girds her neck. She breaks out of the pink frame, extending her legs below and to the right, as though perched in a nook. Yet what appears to be the white inner ledge of the sill extends up her body as a thin aura. Her white halo doubles as a full moon through the window. Despite the ambiguity of the space, her figure perches plausibly, if precariously. A spatial disjoint appears in the left arm, which recedes in the visual field despite balancing the ball in front of the window frame’s edge. The effect is subtle, not fully disrupting the otherwise plau- sible architecture of her pose. But there is a sense of spatial confusion that is consistent with both Wilson’s mature style and the poster movement’s overall esthetic. Her left arm is made of “Moore Galleries San Francisco CA USA,” while the upper arm gives the opening date of July 17, 1967. She hoists a ball emblazoned with the words “Joint Show” in bold red and blue lettering that pops against the poster’s yellow, black, and white background. Just as THE SIXTIES 203

its form breaks free from the frame, its colors break free from the poster’s color palette. The ball flags the exhibition title while also alluding to a yin- yang, a common motif within counterculture ideation. The Taoist princi- ple of yin-yang, which visualizes the union of opposites, proved an appro- priate symbol for an art show that aimed to fuse the ostensibly opposing worlds of the poster and the gallery. Wilson’s poster was a capstone of his style, closing his most productive and emblematic phase. While the show’s posters revealed features of the artists’ styles, none of them, with the notable exception of Kelley’s, could be considered among their finest works. As Grushkin notes, only Griffin’s design had a real impact, though predominantly as “a symbol for the era”.72 But, this was due to its overt marijuana reference more than to its actual design. Griffin succeeded by creating an icon of a box of joints – a countercultural image that was ultimately more associative than artistic. Its fame can be attributed more to its subject matter than to its execution and design. Interestingly, until now, little has been known about the Joint Show outside these five posters. And yet the posters themselves are rarely highly praised, even though their designs captured hallmark stylistic qualities of the artists who created them. But for our purposes, these posters are significant in as they mark the Psychedelic Poster Movement’s push for artistic legitimacy and recognition. Since the posters did not sell particularly well and did not receive critical acclaim, what made the Joint Show so important? It was the concept – the very idea of the exhibit itself – that mattered. This was the Psychedelic Poster movement’s debut as a genuine, self-conscious, and unified art movement. With its invitation, program, progressive prints, and posters, the Joint Show was distinguished by an array of images and formats that asserted its legitimacy as high art – the New Really High Art of the New Really Wild West of the psychedelic frontier.

The opening The opening preview reception on Monday July 17, 1967 was a crowded, chaotic, celebratory affair. Herb Caen described it thus: “From 6 to 10, some 3,500 people, largely wild, jammed into the place, dressed in fantastic costumes – old uniforms covered with medals, American Flags worn as headdresses, pirate outfits, cavaliers and miniskirts so short that Carl Larson described them as ‘A pride of loins.’ . . . A man who said he was a fire inspector stood on the sidewalk and muttered nervously: ‘I believe they’re exceeding the limit in there.’”73 Eyewitness accounts corroborate Caen’s impression of an astounding turnout, the press of the crowd, and the complete “freak take-over” of the gallery.74 Moscoso recalls it being “massively crowded. It was so well attended that we stopped trafficon 204 S. B. MONTGOMERY

Sutter street for about an hour.”75 As the gallery filled, the crowd poured in, pushing against the tightly closed doors. Eventually, it was impossible to get inside. As Raphael Schnepf describes: “The Moore Gallery wasn’t that huge of a place. It was elbow-to-elbow. If you wanted to get from one end of the room to the other, you had to move a lot of people around to do it. You kind of had to squeeze here and squeeze there.”76 The event was so popular that it took either celebrity or personal connection to gain admit- tance. Schnepf recalls: “I thought I had gotten there relatively early, but when I got up to the front door, they weren’t letting anybody in. It was jammed in there. Luckily, Matthew Katz . . . he was by the door and he spotted me and recognized me. He knew I was a poster artist . . . and he pulled me in and shut the door real quick on this crowd of people trying to get in. So, I still thank him that I even got in to the show.”77 Wes Wilson’s mother received this VIP treatment, but only once she made it clear who she was. “So the opening night, my mom came in on the bus and she showed up at the gallery and got into a line that went all the way around the block practically. She started talking to people and they realized that she was my mother. And they said, ‘oh you’re Wes Wilson’s mother. Oh my gosh,’ and some kind person took her all the way to the front of the line and right in the door.”78 The crowd was more “colorful” than the normal demographic of the attendees of a gallery opening, even by the standards of 1967 San Francisco. As Wilson notes: “It was the most attended opening in San Francisco at the time and I don’t think there has been anything like it since either. It was a mixture of rock and roll and posters and society people. In fact, Bob Weir’s parents were there. They’re wealthy people from Atherton down the Peninsula. A wealthy family in the society pages.”79 Similarly, Schnepf recalls, “There was a cross-section of people. It was everything. It was patrons. There were a lot of kind of society-type people there. I remember Rick Griffin was surrounded by a bunch of people asking inane questions. I remember hearing these women commenting on how beautiful Rick Griffin’shairwas.‘Look at his hair. I wish I had hair like that.’”80 Herb Caen describes the opening as a mash-up of a rock concert and a cocktail party. It was the Avalon Ballroom crashing in on the Moore Gallery. It comes across as something of a mutant art opening – the Summer of Love child of an awkward one-night stand between a Family Dog concert and a Gala Ball at the Museum of Modern Art. “Champagne corks popped to the tune of 25 cases. Country Joe & the Fish played. Perfume, sweat, pot, and incense blended into a mixture smoggy enough to make the eyes water. A social type swept out, snorting ‘I didn’t know hippies drank champagne.’‘Only when it’s free, lady’ said one happily. . . . On the big patio behind the gallery enough pot filled the air to turn on the entire neighborhood, whose residents were falling out of the windows to THE SIXTIES 205

stare at the bizarre scene.”81 Not only was this a cultural invasion of the art gallery, but also of the neighborhood, as suggested by gawking neighbors. The hippies were “oﬀ turf” and strategically occupying an “Establishment” cultural institution. Wilson paints a picture more reminiscent of a Family Dog concert than a High Society art event.

“As many as three thousand people came through the gallery that night. It was almost like a rock show, because then Janis . . . ended up singing with Country Joe. I asked for Country Joe and the Fish to play because I really liked Country Joe and wanted them to be there, to be the band for the opening. And other people wanted to play – Janis and Peter (Albin) from Big Brother and some of the Grateful Dead. All sorts of people came from all sorts of bands and there was kind a jam thing toward the end of the evening. Out on this little veranda out back there were people out there lighting cigarettes with pot. It was very unusual for the time because it was illegal to smoke pot.”82

The late-night jam was a staple of the counterculture music scene. Wilson had lined up Country Joe and the Fish as the official band for the opening, even including them on his poster. As at the Avalon, so at the Moore. Ultimately, Caen’s review is more about the event than the art, which he largely ignores in favor of the menagerie of Hippies.83 He concludes his review with a nod to the art, though more for its commercial rather than artistic value: “The art, what you could see of it through the packed bodies, looked promising. The posters, at $2.50 each, are of course magnificent. The other works by The Big Five will bear closer scrutiny, being Establishment-priced at $150 to $2500. The man who owns Moore Gallery – Dr. Norman Moore of Woodside, physicist, former Vice-Pres. of Litton Industries, board chairman of Reed College in Portland – is delighted with the whole scene: ‘These are real artists with a wide range.’”84 But Caen seems skeptical: “That could well be true. What is definitely true is that there has never been an art preview quite like this one, for once, the two dozen duck-billed platitudes who kept saying, ‘It could only happen in San Francisco’ were right.”85 For Caen, the interface between the hippie and straight worlds at the opening was the real story. Speaking of psychedelic posters in general, Albright notes that “like TV, ‘psychedelic art’ is a ‘cool’ medium, demanding participation by the viewer, if only to decipher what the lettering says. In this respect, as in its commercial function, it parallels the tendency of current mainstream art toward breaking down the lines between artists and viewer, art-work and environment, art and life.”86 The opening of the Joint Show operated in precisely this way, essentially recreating the environment of a rock concert in the gallery. The opening event made a statement by aligning the art event with the contemporary critical scene of happenings and conceptual art. The most “happening” thing about it was that it was happening at all. 206 S. B. MONTGOMERY

The press conference If the opening was something of a “total work of art,” so too was the chaotic press conference that preceded it. The artists approached it as a performance of cultural interface. “A reporter asked if the artists regarded the press conference itself as an art form. There was unan- imous assent. ‘Can you talk about the news conference as an art form in some depth?’‘It’s a means of communication,’ said Moscoso. ‘We get to meet you and you get to meet us – in the ﬂesh.’‘But you ask funny questions, you know,’ he added. ‘You still talk to us the same way as, like, last year, but we’re not talking the same. There’s a gap between us.’”87 Albright sums up the long-standing ambivalence between the psychedelic art world and the mainstream: “For the past year or two, the tendrils, rosettes, mandalas and photo-montages of ‘psychedelic art’ have blossomed out all over, from window posters to mini-skirts, from record jackets to direct mail advertising. Yet the artists themselves have been notoriously shy of personal publicity, wary of art galleries, hostile to the Establishment – and the feeling has largely been mutual.”88 The Berkeley Barb’s account of the press conference reveals mutual disin- terest: “‘Do you think this show will help us to understand your art?’ asked the big media. Quiet shrugs. ‘Do you think psychedelic art is the next step?’ No answer. ‘Welldoyouwantustounderstandyouornot?’ No answer.”89 The discomfort between hippie artists and “uptight newsmen” of the mainstream press (ABC, NBC, etc.) was palpable.90 The press appeared unable to understand the counterculture, while the artists appeared disin- terested in being understood. Moscoso recalls the communication gap, suggesting that the mainstream media largely ignored the Joint Show because they did not understand it and felt antagonistic to the counterculture from which it emerged:

“The newspapers and TV came down here, and they started asking us these ridiculous questions, and every time they would ask us a question, we would crack up. We weren’t on the same page at all. As a result . . . we didn’t get very much press from the show itself, even though it was very well attended. . . . They didn’t think very much of us. They looked down on us, like advertisers. . . . We just took advertising art to places it doesn’t usually go, and that is into entertainment. So, the straight people didn’t like us. The cops were beating up the hippies. There was really two cultures in San Francisco at the time. One was what we called “the suits” and the other was the psychedelic people. . . . So, it wasn’t advertised very well in the straight press because they didn’t like us”91

Moscoso believes that this condescension was rooted in the art establishment feeling threatened by the new art: “San Francisco was our museum. They didn’t like that it was not their museum – the streets, everywhere – it THE SIXTIES 207

was our museum. We were on the street. The whole city was our museum. That includes Berkeley, down to Palo Alto. . .”92 Writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, Thomas Albright reviewed the press conference as an event in itself, more “artful confrontation” than interview:

“A press conference for a forthcoming ‘Joint Show’ by San Francisco’s five leading psychedelic poster artists yesterday morning, turned a Sutter street gallery into a Fellini- esque confrontation of the mass media with psychedelia. Hirsute artists, representatives of the underground press and their wives mingled with TV cameras and ‘straight’ reporters covering samples of the artists’ workintheMooregallery,535Sutterstreet.Thefive artists – Wes Wilson, Victor Moscoso, Stanley Mouse, Rick GriffinandKelly(sic)– were introduced by Grover Sales Jr., their public relations man. Norman Moore, owner of the gallery, a former executive of Litton Industries and board chairman of Reed College, said he got the show together to ‘show the scope of work’ the poster artists have also done in drawings, collage and oil. Then it was left up to the artists – and reporters. Question: ‘Do you feel that by having this show you might be selling out?’ Laughter. ‘Is there danger of your being ostracized by your community?’ More laughter. ‘Is the motivation strictly money or are you serious about this?’ Laughter. . . . Said Mouse; ‘Can I ask you a question? Is it really that hard to understand the art works?’‘Are your ties comfortable?’ asked Wilson. . . . Do the posters themselves ‘turn people on?’‘Yeah, sure, that’swhythey’re successful,’ Moscoso said. ‘We’re smoothing the corners of the squares,’ said Mouse. The artists’ public relations man also tried to smooth some corners by asking a few questions ofhisown.Hehadaboutasmuchluckwithanswersastherestofthe‘squares.’”93

Albright, himself sympathetic to the artists and counterculture, lumps the Moore Gallery’s PR representative – Grover Sales Jr. – with the “other squares,” revealing that the divide was not so much between the artists and the press as it was between two cultures –“squares and hips.”94 Despite Albright’s praise for the show, he clumps it together with The Flower Children’s Art Bag exhibit at the Glide Memorial Church (“downtown’s two most popular current art shows”). This did not help elevate the seriousness of the Joint Show in the public’s mind, nor did his assessment that “the Glide exhibition is quieter, but in some ways, it’s a better show.”95 The Berkeley Barb, meanwhile, described the press conference as “an exercise in non-communication” and likened it to a brutal police line-up with “the ﬁve suspects . . . lined up for the mugging, the lights blazed, the cameras began to whirr and stutter.”96 By repeatedly asking the artists if they are “serious,” the press implies the contrary: “‘Is your motivation money or are you serious about all this?’‘Yes, we’re serious, we’re all serious,’ Wilson said. ‘Will you be taking a year or so oﬀ for serious work now?’‘Yes, we’re going to be serious,’ said Kelly (sic).” The inanity of the reportage is beautifully summarized in an exchange between a press photographer and Victor Moscoso. Pointing to a piece on the wall, the photographer asks Moscoso, “Is that your poster?” The artist responds, “No. It’s Kelly’s(sic). It’s a painting.”97 208 S. B. MONTGOMERY

The counterculture’s general mistrust of the “establishment” extended to the gallery owner, despite his attempt to portray himself as a cultural renegade. As The Barb reported, “The last time I had a press conference I was selling microwave ovens in Chicago – quite a switch, eh?” said Mr. Moore, owner of Moore Galleries, 535 Sutter in S.F. “I’m considered the hippie of the industrial world,” said Mr. Moore. “I gave up a vice- presidency in Litton Industries to do this.” After a few hundred feet of TV film is burned, Mr. Moore introduces the artists and explains why the gallery is showing them; “. . . artists . . . other media . . . scope . . .importance of . . . show . . .Art . . . other. . .” Mr. Moore predicted that in five years these artists would be doing more oil paintings than posters. Kelly (sic) thought this was a long time, “Five years? I don’t know. Long time. I don’t know.’”98 Characterizing Moore as an “oven seller” who would “rather switch” (to what?), the Barb casts him as a bit of an opportunist and refuses to take him seriously (mirroring the mainstream press relationship to the artists). His comments are presented as a litany of platitudes, underscoring the tension between the counterculture and the “uptight squares” of the art world, including even those sympathetic to the art. Furthermore, neither the Barb nor Kelley take seriously Moore’s prediction of a move into more “high art” media (read “serious art”). The artists grasped the traditional role of galleries as platforms for their entrance into the ranks of high art, but at the same time, they were mistrustful and concerned about being coopted and ripped off. Simultaneously, they were playing the role of the unconventional artist who is trying hard not to be understood, in the tradition of Dali, Warhol, and Dylan. These artists seemed to be relishing their role, both as members of the counterculture confounding the straight world and as artists doing what artists do to the media: confusing it. In this sense, while the press conference appeared to be a fiasco, it was just one more act in the larger performance of the Joint’s Show’s artistic and cultural meaning. These exasperating encounters between countercultural artists and a less-than-understanding press did not begin with the Joint Show, however. Wilson had struggled to get feature stories placed in the major press. He had to battle the editors of Time to be treated as an artist:

“Time magazine wanted to put my posters in the magazine even earlier (than the April 7 1967 article). But, to do a thing in Time magazine, they said it had to be in Modern Living. And I told them no, I wanted to be in the Art section. Put me in the Art section. It is art, not modern living. They said “we’re trying to do you a favor. What the heck?’ I said, ‘put me in the Art section and, not only that, put it in full color.’ Newsweek had done something but it was just in black and white. (March 6 1967). Some little thing and it didn’t look good. I said ‘the Art section is where it should be.’ He said’‘Well, we’re trying to help you out, but I guess we just can’tdoit THE SIXTIES 209

and hung up. About a month and a half later they called back up again and said ‘we’re ready to put you in the Art section.’”99 The Joint Show and its depiction in the mainstream press as a “hippie art event” captured the incomprehension, indiﬀerence, and confusion that animated the relationship between countercultural artists and conventional journalists.

Attendance and closing The opening party was a crowded affair, but what of the attendance for the remainder of the show’s run? Though attendance records do not exist, it appears that it continued to draw visitors. Moscoso recalls that it was “well attended” after the opening, though we can assume that the crowds were not measurable in the thousands.100 Wilson concurs: “It was pretty well crowded for a long time. There were people who would come into the city and make a special point to see that stuff. And there were collectors.”101 Adjacent to, and contrasting with the mayhem, crowd, and demographic at the Moore Gallery was a more traditional gallery event related to an exhibit of paintings by the recently deceased Maxfield Parrish (1870–1966) whose work had inspired the poster artists. Raphael Schnepf recalls that after attending the Joint Show, “I went in there because they were having an event as well. It was empty by comparison.”102 It may not have broken attendance records during its full run, but the Joint Show certainly could boast having hosted the most raucous art opening of the year. It is not clear exactly when the Joint Show came down from the walls of the Moore Gallery, but it appears to have lasted through early September. The back page of the September 1–7, 1967 edition of the Berkeley Barb still listed the it among San Francisco’s ongoing art exhibits.”103 This same notice first appeared on the back page of the July 21–27 Berkeley Barb issue immediately after the opening of the Joint Show and was consistently present through the September 1–7 issue.104 By the next issue, the Joint Show was no longer listed, suggesting that it ran for just under eight weeks, from July 18 to roughly September 7, 1967.105 This tallies with the approx- imations of roughly two months recalled by both Moscoso and Wilson.106

Legacy The Joint Show’s most enduring material legacy were the posters themselves, but its conceptual legacy is much larger. In crucial ways, the show shaped subsequent discourse on psychedelic poster art. It honored and elevated the poster artists, galvanized the poster movement, and inspired other artists. For the counterculture, the show represented an artistic 210 S. B. MONTGOMERY

victory. As Raphael Schnepf observes: “These guys were my heroes as well as my friends. And to see them being celebrated like this and to see a show of their work was so wonderful.”107 Fellow poster artist Dennis Nolan confirms the sense of recognition: “It really blew us away to see all the work hung like that. The posters looked great like that – all framed together. It was the first time I’d seen all that work on the wall like that, framed. . . . These things that people had done for dances that were only attended by us – these posters were suddenly in a gallery downtown in the financial district.”108 Was it successful? Says Moscoso: “Absolutely. It blew us away. We had no idea we were that popular. . . . We had no idea there would be that many people there and there would be that much coverage.”109 The Joint Show was the culmination of a dawning awareness of the artistry of the psychedelic posters, one that had been building steadily over the previous year. Moscoso notes: “At that time, we were not yet at our peak. That happened probably right after the Joint Show when we were in Life magazine. Then, at that point, it wasn’t just a San Francisco event, it was a national event.”110 Despite the ignorance exhibited at the press conference, there were signs that the artistry of the psychedelic poster was gaining recognition. Newsweek and Time both published articles on the posters in the Spring 1967. The “Life and Leisure” section of Newsweek that March featured the poster as a kind of puerile fad (“the coolest things”).111 But the article actually took the psychedelic poster artists seriously, singling out Wilson and Mouse and discussing their influences. Noting that “the psychedelic posters often attract a somewhat older, more art-conscious following,” Newsweek underscored the elevated artistry of the designs, suggesting that the posters occupied a space between art and commerce. A month later, the April 7 issue of Time contained a short feature on “Nouveau Frisco” posters that focused on Wes Wilson.112 In July of 1967, it was still a relatively radical notion to crash the halls of the art world with an incursion of “hippie outsider art.” But the Joint Show recognized and celebrated these psychedelic posters as part of a distinct artistic movement connected to countercultural identity, thus setting the stage for subsequent exhibitions. In its wake, psychedelic posters would be increasingly exhibited as art. This was perhaps the Joint Show’s greatest contribution, one that we can fully appreciate fifty years later, when retrospective exhibitions of psychedelic art abound. The ephemeral Joint Show did not travel, despite Thomas Albright’s tantalizing note regarding plans to do so: “Norman Moore, the owner, says the show already has been booked for the University of California Student Union and that a similar show may be sent to the U.S. Embassy in Ecuador, for later circulation throughout South America. Such is the power of Acapulco Gold.”113 However, other poster shows did emerge, THE SIXTIES 211

including two exhibitions in October. The first, held from October 6–14, 1967, was “An Exhibition of Psychedelic Posters” held in the Student Union at the University of California at Berkeley. It celebrated the breaking of the ground for the University Art Museum and included a poster by Wes Wilson. More ambitiously, Victor Moscoso devised a “Touring Poster Show” comprised of his Neon Rose posters series. This was a unified body of work – conceived, named, and presented as revolving around the artist and not a concert event, promoter or venue.114 His Joint Show poster was included in the Neon Rose series and exhibit.115 Like the Joint Show, the Neon Rose series was a psychedelic poster manifesto, insisting in no uncertain terms that what was happening was nothing short of an artistic movement. Nor was the Moore Gallery done with psychedelic poster art. Pleasantly surprised by the attention the first Joint Show had generated, the gallery staged a follow-up exhibit a year later. Raphael Schnepf recalls,

“I got invited to be in the second Joint Show, which was a non-event, let me tell you. A year later, in ’68 there was a second Joint Show. It was at the Moore Gallery. It ran for a month, as those shows do. It did not make history. None of the original Joint Show people were in it. Bob Fried was in it and I was in it and a couple of other people . . . several other poster artists. I was so excited to get into a Joint Show but . . . it was a real half-hearted attempt on their part on every level. . . . The first Joint Show was such an event and the work was so spectacular. And I don’t remember being particularly knocked-out by the work that was in the second Joint Show. It wasn’tat the same level. Historically it was certainly not the same event.”116 The Moore Gallery learned that it could not make history twice. Schnepf remembers: “Somebody in the gallery decided to try to do it again, but it just didn’t have any support. They put it together and it was a show on the wall, but . . .”117 The almost accidental nature of Schnepf’s inclusion sug- gests that the gallery’s approach to this second Joint Show may have been somewhat slipshod: “When I was invited to be a part of it, I was so excited. I was at the Family Dog offices, working on something about posters, when someone from the Moore Gallery came in and was talking about doing a second Joint Show. Somebody there, maybe Jaxon or maybe Chet (Helms) himself, said ‘you should talk to this guy.’ And that’s how I got invited. I think they invited a few other people from the Family Dog group of artists”118 Schnepf’s work in the second Joint Show echoes the variety of work that comprised the first Joint Show: “The artwork I brought was the same art that I had at the Monterey Pop Festival Art Show. I had a painting and some drawings and some psychedoodle drawings and some other poster originals and stuff like that. It was kind of a collage painting, very psychedelic imagery that was all textures and clusters of things and it rotated around a center. It was symmetrical, like most of my posters, and it had a big circle in the visual center that was made up of a pelvis 212 S. B. MONTGOMERY

and all the openings in the pelvis showed all kinds of interesting things.”119 No posters were designed for the second Joint Show. Despite the success of the first Joint Show, it appears that the novelty had worn off by the time the gallery opted for a sophomore effort.120 Trying to reproduce the same model using different artists was destined to fall short, if for no other reason than the fact that the first Joint Show had resulted in the formation of a perceived “top-tier” of poster artists, none of whom were involved in this second iteration. The Joint Show’s own promulgation of the notion of the “Big Five” determined that this second show would be perceived as a lesser event. The success of the Joint Show both prompted a follow-up and predestined its failure. Nonetheless, the very fact that the idea of a collective showing of psychedelic poster artists was still afloat was part of the legacy of the Joint Show. Ultimately, the Joint Show demonstrates the difficulty of transcending the lines between hippie and straight, high and low art, and commercial traditions and artistic aspirations. The show was about transcending, transgressing, and perhaps bridging these perceived divides. Was it entirely successful? No. As Caen notes the Hippie artists were “beaten back” and the Joint Show’s impact, at least at first, was somewhat minimal. Did it entirely fail? No. It represented a manifesto and a harbinger of change. Eventually the psychedelic poster won the war for acceptance in the art world, as demonstrated by the increasing number of exhibitions of poster art held at major institutions. The art of the counterculture brought its lingo to the forum of the art gallery – foreign territory for the hippie but promised-land for the artist. The conventions of the art world and the (un) conventions of the counterculture came together for a party to open the Joint Show. The party was great, and the artistic argument would have a long, slow success over the next five decades. The other legacy of the Joint Show can be found in the near hegemonic term “the Big Five” used in reference to Griffin, Wilson, Moscoso, Mouse, and Kelley. The term was coined specifically for the show. Wilson recalls, “So that’s where the Big Five idea came from. That was actually something in the Joint Show itself, as part of the PR of the Joint Show of five poster artists in San Francisco. I think it was the gallery guy and the gallery who put that together – the Big Five.”121 The earliest use of “the Big Five” that I have encountered thus far is found in a reporter’s question to the artists during the July 12 press conference: “Have you, as the Big Five, ever thought of entering other media, like television?”122 The June 29 press release from Grover Sales Jr. uses the similar term “top five.” Caen uses the moniker “The Big Five” in his review of the opening. The term “Big Five” was itself a marketing device, increasing the show’s status (and to for the gallery’s hoped-for clients, the value of the works). It asserted the artistic legitimacy of the entire poster renaissance, while simultaneously THE SIXTIES 213

constructing a hierarchy within the art movement. But, the term’s origins lay not with the artists, but with the artworld itself, the very world against which the artists rankled. How do they feel about the Big Five moniker? “I don’t like it,” says Moscoso. “I have no idea who came up with it. There were a lot of other poster artists who were good too. Who decided that we were . . .? I guess . . . we sold the most posters.”123 This notion of the canonical Big Five has remained at the core of studies of the poster movement. To a significant degree, this is due to the imprimatur of the Joint Show in first articulating this idea. The Joint Show should be recognized as both an early public assertion of artistic identity by the greater poster movement as well as a closing argument for Phase One of the poster renaissance. The Big Five are rightfully big, but the grouping of five should be seen as a legacy of the Joint Show and not necessarily evidence that they were the only poster artists of merit at the time – just the five major male players in the movement during the summer of 1967.124 Rick Griffin describes the Joint Show as a turning point in the poster movement from its first to its second wave: “The Joint Show was an enormous success. We had an opening on Sutter Street and Janis Joplin and Big Brother played at the opening. There were thousands of people there. But, after that, the Family Dog decided ‘well . . . these guys have made it . . .these guys are old hat now. It’s time to find some new artists and get a new approach to these posters.’ . . . The continuity was broken. It just sort of brought an end to that whole era.”125 To-be-sure, many excellent Family Dog posters emerged after the Joint Show, but it is difficult to dispute Griffin’s assessment of the more far flung variety of quality and style that defines the series beginning in the Fall of 1967. It may be that an ecumenical communal spirit fostered the Family Dog’s more expansive commissioning of posters, but it might also have been a reflection of the financial spiral that would undermine its ability to pay for the printing of exceptional poster art. Meanwhile, Bill Graham’s business and poster commissions were flourishing. What Griffin notes, then, is less a complete change in the poster movement than a shift in the patronage, one that would slowly but steadily move the posters out of the counterculture and into the realm of mainstream commerce. This was perhaps inevitable, but it is interesting that Griffin pinpoints the Joint Show as a pivotal moment in the transformation and evolution of the poster movement. Because it was promoted as an art exhibition and not an exhibition of rock posters, the Joint Show has been somewhat overlooked in the growing bibliography on poster art, which has focused on the art of rock. But despite this peripheral positioning in the scholarship, the exhibit holds great historical significance as an initial statement of the validity of psychedelic poster art and countercultural art in general. Similarly, the Joint 214 S. B. MONTGOMERY

Show had a profound impact on the study of psychedelic poster art. It established a narrative in which the five artists exhibited in the show became “The Big Five.” This was the paradoxical legacy of the Joint Show: it simultaneously legitimated the artistic validity of psychedelic poster art, opened the gallery doors to the counterculture (however fleet- ingly), and contributed to the creation of an exclusionary canon. So what was the Joint Show? Essentially, it was an art exhibit and a manifesto – an assertion of an art movement’s group identity and character. The show did not so much contain an argument for “high art” but rather for psychedelic poster art to be taken seriously by the art world. Wilson and company were not trying to conform to an abstract ideal of high art, but rather to see their own art acknowledged. The Joint Show is best understood as a fascinating moment of encounter between the conventional art world and the counterculture’s art world. Ultimately, the show did not present psychedelic art as conventional high art, but rather celebrated it precisely for being unconventional and countercultural. The artists themselves struggled to establish themselves as successful by the standards of the art world while remaining true to their countercultural origins. The Joint Show prompted the artists to negotiate their self-image as artists and cultural representatives. At the end of the day, it was not an issue of a struggle between High Art versus Low Art, but rather between Conventional High Art versus Counterculture High Art. That struggle did not begin at the Joint Show, but it was there that the psychedelic poster movement stepped forward for the first time and made this argument on the “foreign soil” of the art gallery.

Notes

1. Caen, “The Hippie Academy.” 2. A. F., “Looking for Art on Poster Scene,” 37. 3. d’Alessandro and Terry. Summer of Love. 4. The bibliography on psychedelic poster art is growing. Recent works, include: Grushkin, The Art of Rock; Lemke, The Art of the Fillmore; Peterson, “Photographic Imagery in Psychedelic Music Posters of San Francisco”; Moist, “Dayglo Koans and Spiritual Renewal”; Gastaut and Criqui, Off the Wall; Tomlinson, “Sign Language”; Moist, “Visualizing Postmodernity”; Montgomery, “Psychedelic Rock Poster Art in San Francisco”; Meriwether, The Attics of Our Lives; Montgomery, “Signifying the Ineffable”; Terry, “Selling San Francisco’s Sound”; and Binder, “San Francisco Psychedelic Rock Posters.” 5. The Armory Show is the title by which the International Exhibition of Modern Art is commonly known. Organized by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors in 1913, it was held at the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue in New York City, The show is regarded as the first major exhibition of Modern art in America. Often seen as the catalyst for the development of American Modernism, THE SIXTIES 215

it opened up American eyes to Cubism, Futurism, Fauvism, and other movements from the European avant garde. See: Brown, The Story of the Armory Show. 6. Even when the posters made for the show are reproduced in monographs on the artists, there is generally little, if any, information or analysis offered about the show or the posters themselves. Studies of the art of psychedelia most often give cursory note of the posters and no mention of the Joint Show. Grushkin should be credited with including the Joint Show posters in the The Art of Rock, and thus maintaining their presence in the literature, which has tended to emphasize rock posters over the commercial or political posters that were produced by the same artists. Grushkin, The Art of Rock, 234–235. Another notable exception is the insightful essay by Terry, “Selling San Francisco’s Sound,” 32. Though psychedelic posters in general are briefly discussed (24–25), their first major interface with the world of art exhibitions goes unnoted in Johnson, Are You Experienced? It is equally unnoted in the brief section on psychedelia in Doss, American Art of the 20th and 21st Centuries, 184–187. Thomas Albright initially seems to offer an exception in Art in the San Francisco Bay Area. In his discussion of psychedelic art in the chapter on “The Utopian Vision” (165–185), he reproduces Griffin’s Joint Show poster, but only to visualize his otherwise unexplored point that Griffin “illustrated hashish pipes and marijuana plants in a meticulous, emblematic graphic style that nostalgically recalled traditions of nineteenth-century American advertising art and package design” (171). 7. Grushkin, The Art of Rock, 234. This was corroborated by Victor Moscoso in a July 12, 2017 interview. 8. Wilson, interviewed by the author, July 14, 2017. The article in question is Read, “Wes Wilson.” 9. Moscoso, interviewed by the author, July 12, 2017. Moscoso noted that Quick Lunch was an early contender for the title. 10. Read, “Wes Wilson;”“Nouveau Frisco,” Time, April 7, 1967 (Vol. 89, Issue 14), p. 88. 11. The poster (BG-62) is number sixty-two in the series commissioned by Bill Graham. 12. In 1969 it became the Kertesz Fine Art Galleries, founded by Joseph Kertesz. Since 2007, the space has been occupied by the Joanie Char Boutique. 13. Dr. Norman Moore (d. May 1, 2009) held a PhD in physics from MIT, taught electrical engineering at Stanford, was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, worked with micro-waves and cathode rays, Litton Industries from 1953 to 1967, and was on the board of Reed College in Portland. Their collection of works by contemporary Latin American artists was featured in the exhibition “Norman & Jean Moore Collection: Latin American Artists from the 60s & 70s” at the Sanchez Art Center in Pacifica, CA (May 31–June 30, 2013). 14. Albright, “A Psychedelic Flowering,” (Reprinted in: Albright, On Art and Artists, 109–111.) 15. It is likely that the invitation was finalized by the gallery, using Wilson’s openable mirror-image and Seidemann’s photograph. 16. Schnepf, interviewed by the author July 18, 2017. 17. Wilson, interviewed by the author, July 14, 2017. 18. Ibid. 19. Berkeley Barb, 6. Founded by Max Scherr and first published on August 13, 1965, the Barb was among the earliest counterculture underground newspapers. 20. See note 17 above. 21. Ibid. 216 S. B. MONTGOMERY

22. Albright, “A Psychedelic Flowering,” 26–27. Albright even uses the term “art movement” to characterize the group. 23. These drawings were related to his comix work, such as he would later develop for Hocus Pocus and Zapp. See: Hathaway and Nadel, Victor Moscoso. 24. BG & CP, “Oven Seller’d Rather Switch.” 25. Albright, “Poster People Meet Press.” 26. The only proper spelling of Kelley’s name in the Joint Show press and posters can be found, not surprisingly, on Kelley’s own design and in Caen’s review. 27. For example, BG-53, BG-58, and BG-62. 28. See note 16 above. 29. Ibid. 30. Albright, “Spirit of Mother Lode MAD and the Circus.” 31. See note 16 above. 32. Moscoso, interviewed by the author, July 12, 2017. 33. See note 17 above. 34. Albright, Art in the San Francisco Bay Area, 7 and 267. The first retrospective of his work, Art of Ralph Chessé, 1900–1991, curated by Laura Valerai, was staged at the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens, GA from July 11–October 4, 2015. 35. Griffin was 23, Mouse was 26, Kelley was 27, Moscoso was 31,and Wilson was 30. Wilson celebrated his 30th birthday on July 15, just two days before the opening of the Joint Show. 36. In 2009, Colin Carpenter made a documentary on the artist entitled Life is Junk. The Work of Gerhard Nicholson. 37. In a July 12, 2017 interview with the author, Victor Moscoso mentioned seeing a camera crew at the opening and suggested that this footage might still exist. The film briefly shows Victor and Gail Moscoso at the opening. I have been able to view the footage, but have not yet ascertained its origin. 38. The poster is numbered FD-69, the sixty-ninth poster in the Family Dog series. 39. The poster is numbered BG-29. 40. See note 17 above. 41. Ibid. 42. The San Francisco Oracle,11–12. 43. See note 32 above. 44. These included Wes Wilson’s BG-16, BG-18, BG-36, and BG-57 designs, and Rick Griffin’s designs for FD-52 and FD-69. Victor Moscoso’s coloristic punch was illustrated by his FD-46, FD-49, FD-61, and FD-66. The great collaborative team of Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelley appeared in FD-45 and FD-48 (using a photograph by Bob Seidmann). 45. King, The Collector’s Guide to Psychedelic Rock Posters, 759. 46. Ibid., 325–326. The poster is numbered BG-29. The drawing for this poster was included in the Joint Show. 47. Ibid., 759. These we apparently printed without the artists’ knowledge These remained in storage until 1999. 48. The Berkeley Barb, 14. 49. Walker and Teter, The Great Poster Trip, inside back cover. Only Mouse and Kelley’s extra-large Western Front poster costs more, at a whopping $3.25. 50. See note 17 above. 51. Ibid. 52. Examples include Griffin’s 1967–68 “Canabliss” poster for the Berkeley Bonaparte (original drawing included in the Joint Show), Mouse and Kelley’s Zig-Zag rolling THE SIXTIES 217

paper logo (FD-14) and an obviously stoned Smokey the Bear (FD-16) from June and July 1966 respectively, Griffin’s own semi-veiled linking of marijuana and pot- o-goldrush themes on his FD-58 and FD-62 from April and May 1967 respectively, and Robert Fried’s “High Mass” poster for the Encore Theater in November 1967. 53. Albright, “A Psychedelic Flowering,” 27. 54. I have not yet been able to locate the source of this image. 55. See: Griffin, Rick Griffin; and Harvey, Heart and Torch. 56. The poster is numbered FD-69. 57. The posters are numbered FD-63, FD-67, and FD-71. 58. In serving the higher goal of the meta-composition, Fried largely subsumed his own artistic identity to fit the template set by Griffin’s two posters. An exceptionally gifted artist himself, Fried exemplifies the spirit of artistic community that ran as a current through the poster renaissance. 59. Griffin and Moscoso would successfully collaborate on this idea in early December 1967 with the Denver-San Francisco rainbow diptych for Jim Kweskin at the Family Dog (FD-D13/FD-95). 60. The poster is numbered FD-65. 61. These are numbered FD-D12, FD-101, and BG-105 respectively. 62. The poster is numbered BG-136. 63. Email correspondence sent by Stanley Mouse to Michael Parke-Taylor on June 6, 2017. I thank Michael Parke-Taylor for graciously sharing this. 64. See Albright, “A Psychedelic Flowering,” 26. 65. On Moscoso’s “moving” posters see: Montgomery, “Making the Posters Dance.” 66. The poster is numbered FD-61. 67. The poster is numbered FD-66. 68. The poster is numbered NR-20 in Moscoso’s Neon Rose series. 69. See note 17 above. 70. The original (17″ ×12″) drawing was made in pencil and then inked in black pen. Notes on the right margin reveal Wilson working out the poetics of the text: “Greater sex through more work . . . sex lex pax . . . pax & lex thru sex . . . peace and law thru sex.” Wilson was clearly working on a sentiment akin to “Make Love Not War.” 71. Wilson was fond of including poetic phrases in his posters. His design for a December 15, 1966 Levi Strauss & Company event commemorating retiring employees at the World Trade Club in the Ferry Building in San Francisco, printed in shades of blue to suggest denim, is largely based around a similar textual sentiment. Its large text proclaiming that “We dream of a time when knowledge comes of age to show us a beginning which has no ending is. . .” is itself optimistic, alluding to, but not fully revealing, some search for truth or knowledge. 72. Grushkin, The Art of Rock, 234. 73. See note 1 above. 74. Raphael (Bob) Schnepf estimated that there were between 3,000–4,000 people. “It was packed. There were people literally everywhere, wall-to-wall.” Personal conver- sation with the author May 20, 2016. 75. See note 32 above. 76. See note 16 above. 77. Ibid. At that time, Katz was still manager of the Jefferson Airplane. 78. “My mom came in on the bus and she showed up at the gallery and got into a line that went all the way around the block practically. She started talking to people and they realized that she was my mother. And they said, ‘oh, you’re Wes Wilson’s 218 S. B. MONTGOMERY

mother,’ and some kind person took her all the way to the front of the line and right I the door.” Wes Wilson, interviewed by the author, July 14, 2017. 79. Ibid. 80. See note 16 above. 81. See note 1 above. 82. See note 17 above. 83. “In the fading sunlight, you could look beneath the beards and through the lank hair and see that most of these young people look rather ill. Malnutrition, perhaps? ‘Do you ever eat?’ I asked a wan child mother holding a baby not much younger than she. ‘Doughnuts,’ she said at last. ‘Lots of doughnuts.’” Caen, “The Hippie Academy.” 84. Ibid. 85. Ibid. 86. Albright, “A Psychedelic Flowering,” 27. 87. Albright, “Poster People Meet Press,” 44. 88. Albright, “A Psychedelic Flowering,” 26. 89. BG & CP, “Oven Seller’d Rather Switch,” 6. 90. Efforts to locate any footage from the mainstream press have thus far proven unsuccessful. Victor Moscoso informed the author that he has contacted the news stations and none appear to have archived the footage. 91. See note 32 above. 92. Ibid. 93. See note 87 above. 94. See note 32 above. 95. Albright, “Spirit of Mother Lode MAD and the Circus,” 41. The Flower Children’s Art Bag was an eclectic assembly of roughly sixty pieces in all manner of media by forty artists. While the exhibits might hold in common the notion of collective exhibition, the Joint Show was genuinely focused on a discernible group of artists working as an art movement, as opposed the Glide exhibit which was a more ecumenical hodge-podge of assembled artists, each represented by only one or two pieces. 96. See note 89 above. 97. Ibid. 98. Ibid. 99. See note 17 above. 100. See note 32 above. 101. See note 17 above. 102. Schnepf, interviewed by the author July 18, 2017. “Right next door to the Moore Gallery was another gallery that was having a Maxfield Parish show at the time. Original Maxfield Parrish art for sale in there. It was Kelley who turned me on to this. All those guys were influenced by Maxfield Parrish. Kelley was so excited. He said, ‘you know what’s right next door?!’” 103. Berkeley Barb, 16. I credit Michael Parke-Taylor for this discovery and thank him for his generous collegiality in sharing this information. 104. Berkeley Barb, 16; Berkeley Barb, 15; Berkeley Barb, 1967, 15; Berkeley Barb, 15; Berkeley Barb, 16; and Berkeley Barb, 16. 105. Berkeley Barb, Volume 5, Issue 10, September 15–21, 1967. There was no issue during the week of September 8–14, 1967. 106. Moscoso, interviewed by the author, July 12, 2017. Wilson, interviewed by the author, July 14, 2017. THE SIXTIES 219

107. See note 16 above. 108. Nolan, interviewed by the author, March 30, 2018. 109. See note 32 above. 110. Ibid. “The Great Poster Wave.” 111. “The Coolest Things,” 87. 112. “Nouveau Frisco,” 88. 113. Albright, “Spirit of Mother Lode MAD and the Circus,” 41. 114. The other poster series, such as BG and FD, are essentially grouped around the patrons. The BG and FD nomenclature was initially conceived as a catalog numbering system within the entertainment business. The Bill Graham and Family Dog series, like all the others, evolved by a certain random process of accretion. The only real unifying elements in these series were the patrons and venues. The rest, including poster artists and concert performers, were subject to myriad external elements such as touring schedules and artist availability. Only the Neon Rose series was exclusively focused around the notion of a discrete artistic oeuvre, and thus artistic identity. In fact, the majority of the Neon Rose posters do not even advertise music, but rather cover a wide array of cultural and commercial events. 115. The poster is numbered NR-25. 116. See note 16 above. 117. Ibid. 118. Ibid. 119. Ibid. 120. In a 1968 article, Thomas Albright expresses a sense of over-saturation and decline in the poster world. Albright, “Visuals,” 16 and 22. 121. See note 17 above. 122. See note 87 above. 123. See note 32 above. 124. The stature of these poster artists at the time, can be seen in their participation in the 1st Annual Cosmic Car Show held at Muir Beach on Saturday September 2, 1967. The entry form announces the “Panel of Judges – Joint Show Artists – Kelley, Mouse, Rick Griffin, Wes Wilson” (minus Moscoso) as part of the selling point for the event. Less than two months after the opening of the Joint Show, and just as it was closing, the Cosmic Car Show illustrates how the poster artists held a certain counterculture celebrity status. This reveals the ongoing legacy of the Joint Show as well as the wider appreciation of the artists of this movement. 125. Rick Griffin film interview. Date unknown. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=- JScmfLfnpw.

Acknowledgments

Heartfelt thanks to the artists who graciously shared their knowledge with me during interviews. Deep gratitude to Jeremy Varon for believing in this project and for sharing his peerless editorial mastery. Additional thanks to Natasha Zaretsky and the editors of The Sixties. For ongoing discussion and insight into all things to do with psychedelic posters, including the Joint Show, I thank Paul Harbaugh, Nicholas Meriwether, Kevin Moist, Michael Parke-Taylor, and Gary Westford. 220 S. B. MONTGOMERY

Disclosure statement

No potential conﬂict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Scott B. Montgomery is Associate Professor of Art History in the School of Art and Art History at the University of Denver in Denver, CO. He specializes in the art of medieval relic cults and pilgrimage. In addition to numerous articles, he has published two books: St. Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cologne. Relics, Reliquaries and the Visual Culture of Group Sanctity in Late Medieval Europe and Casting Our Own Shadows. Recreating the Medieval Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela (with Alice A. Bauer). He also researches the art of psychedelic posters and the 1960s counterculture, on which he has published several articles. He is currently working on a monograph on psychedelic artist Lee Conklin and a documentary ﬁlm on the Family Dog Denver (“The Tale of the Dog”).

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