Making the Posters Dance: Victor Moscoso's Four-Dimensional Posters and Adventures in Exhibition Concept, Design, and Archiving* / Scott B
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Making the Posters Dance: Victor Moscoso's Four-Dimensional Posters and Adventures in Exhibition Concept, Design, and Archiving* / Scott B. Montgomery <1> Generally, posters do not move, let alone dance, wave, wink, or fly. They tend to stay still, affixed to walls. In keeping with the advertising mandate originally inherent in the medium, clarity in delivering a message is frequently a guiding principle in poster design. Artistry is employed in the service of communicating the idea, whether political, social, or commercial. But art's role has tended to be subservient - to attract the viewer's eye toward the advertising message. Transcending this, the poster reached its first artistic apotheosis in the late 19th/early 20th century work of Art Nouveau masters such as Alphonse Muccha. Taking a cue from Art Nouveau posters, 1960s psychedelic poster artists brought stunning visual artistry to the forefront - ignoring the advertising mandate traditionally imposed upon the medium. While vibrant artistic pockets existed elsewhere, the cultural nexus of the psychedelic poster movement was San Francisco. Here a countercultural hothouse environment spawned a distinct aesthetic vision. Reproducible and inexpensive, posters were the ideal visual format for the so-called "hippie" counterculture's self-expression. Psychedelic posters are the high art of the counterculture. <2> This fecund cultural environment nurtured a tremendous sense of artistic experimentation, the fruits of which include some truly audacious artistic challenges to any perceived limitation of the poster's possibilities. The art of the psychedelic poster is in opposition to the traditional mandate of immediate, clear delivery of the advertising message. Instead, psychedelic posters request that you explore their visual splendor, their optic play, their art. It is more about the ride than the message. This is, of course, perfectly in accord with the general psychedelic ethos of exploring new possibilities and impossibilities by transcending or side-stepping expectations, norms, and perceived realities, as expressed in slogans such as "Turn on, tune in, drop out" and "Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream."[i] Psychedelic posters invite you to slow down, accept the ride, and find meaning in your own way and at your own pace. Take time to look and enjoy the visual trip is the psychedelic poster's siren call. <3> Spanning roughly 1965-1971, the San Francisco area psychedelic poster movement enjoyed its real apex in 1967-68. Part art movement and part cultural phenomenon, psychedelic posters were the visual nexus for the expression of countercultural identity, ideals, and recreations. Among the numerous poster artists, eight emerge as the most significant in terms of quality, quantity, and influence. These are among the greatest pioneers of the psychedelic aesthetic - Stanley Mouse, Wes Wilson, Rick Griffin, Alton Kelley, Bonnie MacLean, Lee Conklin, David Singer, and, of course, Victor Moscoso. Their elevated artistry and experimental conceptions fashioned some of the most iconic imagery of the era. Formulating a suitably varied psychedelic style, these poster artists fused diverse elements of dynamic line, bold color, surreal and shape-shifting imagery, experimentation with printing techniques, and a general sense of embracing the ineffable, the indefinable, and the unpredictable. All psychedelic artists invite a sense of visual play, but along with Griffin and Conklin, Moscoso excels at forcing us to work hard at this play. An investment of time is essential to "get it," though the reward is great. We don't necessarily slow down because we want to, but rather because we must. The posters draw us in, rewarding protracted gazing by revealing their secrets slowly. Viewing becomes more about looking than necessarily understanding. Psychedelic and countercultural ideals are artistically expressed in the visual exploration of what one Acid Test flier heralded "expect the unexpectable."[ii] <4> One of the most unexpectable artistic manifestations of the poster movement was the evocation of movement on posters - the play of time. This was most dramatically achieved by Victor Moscoso in the eight four- dimensional (4D) posters that he produced during 1967-68. These are stationary images that perform the passage of time when viewed under special lighting conditions. I call them 4D posters because they play within the realm of time, as their designs only unfold over time, becoming almost cinematic. Through strategic use of off-set lithographic printing and the development of a special light box, Moscoso was able to fashion "moving" posters that transcend their traditional poster-ness and "enter the realm of poetry," as the artist notes. Moscoso's 4D posters are an innovative fusion of ideas related to kinetic art, light art, cinema, and graphic design. He was not making advertising posters, but rather making art in the poster medium. Novel in concept and execution, these posters are among the most daring experiments of the psychedelic poster movement in the San Francisco area. Appearing during the zenith of 1967-68, these posters should be seen as part of these artists' endeavor to challenge the boundaries of art. Moscoso consciously challenged himself to explore new artistic frontiers, pushing the poster beyond its traditional boundaries. The most formally and theoretically-trained of all the movement's artists, Moscoso had studied with color-theorist Joseph Albers. Putting his art- school background to good use, particularly in his groundbreaking psychedelic color experiments, he wanted to break the poster's so-called "five-second rule" of advertising, wishing to slow one down and take time to look. Now, Moscoso sought to make one look at time. In doing so, he extended the psychedelic poster's conceptual novelty to its farthest reaches - transcending its very poster-ness. And why not? If three- dimensional people were aspiring toward the fifth dimension, why couldn't two-dimensional posters reach for the fourth dimension? <5> Fluid, stretched time has always been a key factor in psychedelic art and experience. Moscoso took this axiom in the most novel direction with his 4D posters, images that do not move but appear to with changing lights (or blinking eyes). In doing so, the posters transcend their existential planarity, their very "posterness." They become images about time and motion themselves. There is a dimensional slippage here, as the spatial third dimension is bypassed on the way to the temporal fourth. In much the same way that he intentionally inverted traditional rules of color harmony in his exploration of the possibilities of intense color juxtaposition, Moscoso stormed the gates of time by changing the rules. This pioneering extension of the poster's possibility invites an almost synesthetic transcendence of media, the senses, and perhaps even sense. As Moscoso so beautifully articulates it, "You get the dimension of time....and it enters the realm of poetry and music."[iii] <6> While designing a poster for The Family Dog's concerts by The Doors and The Sparrow (shortly to evolve into Steppenwolf) at San Francisco's Avalon Ballroom on May 12-13, 1967 Moscoso came across a photograph that would felicitously inspire his exploration of the fourth dimension in poster art. [iv] FIGURE 1 - Victor Moscoso. The Doors, The Sparrow. May 12-13, 1967. Avalon Ballroom, San Francisco (FD-61). © Rhino Entertainment Company. Used with permission. All rights reserved. <7> "It comes from Edison. I was looking through a book on silent films. I saw a kinetoscope with a 35mm film loop inside - the loop was shot by Edison and it was a lady named Annabelle dancing with wings."[v] This was doubtless a screen-still from W.K.L Dickson, William Heise, and Thomas Edison's 1894 film of Annabelle Whitford's terpischorian flutters, known as Annabelle's Butterfly Dance.[vi] The 4D aspect "was originally a mistake. I stumbled across it the way Columbus stumbled on America." [vii] In keeping with the experimental ethos of the time, Moscoso printed the image off-register to see how it would look. "I got one frame with the wings up, and I wanted to echo the movement by printing the colors off- register. A friend of mine - Howard Hesseman - had a hallway covered with dance-concert posters, lit with Christmas tree lights. The red, blue and green were strong. The yellow was too weak. And he said 'Victor, you know that poster you did last week, with the lady with wings....well, she flies!' And I knew how his hall was arranged with the lights, so I knew exactly what he was talking about. The red canceled the blue and the blue canceled the red."[viii] Though interested in exploring the suggestion of movement, Moscoso had no idea that the right lighting would translate a suggestion of wings moving into a full-fledged perception of them flapping in time - the fourth dimension[FILM 1]. The alternating colors cancel one another, making the readily visible part of the poster shift as the lights change, thereby creating actual movement within the perception of the image. Simple, but revolutionary, it was a psychedelic breakthrough for the poster. It is suitably serendipitous that the image source for Moscoso's first filmic poster was an early film produced by another visionary maker of moving images. Like a screening of Edison's film framed by pulsating lettering, the poster lets Annabelle fly to an altogether different medium. Fluttering from film to film-still to filmic un-still poster, Annabelle flutters across moving pictures and moving posters alike. <8> Though initially an accident, the idea was quickly developed by Moscoso who explored and perfected the possibilities of motion within a two-dimensional poster. Once Hesseman alerted him to Annabelle's aerial abilities, Moscoso began to explore the idea. Starting tentatively, his first conscious 4D poster advertises the Youngbloods at the Avalon Ballroom on June 15-18, 1967.