Psychedelic Rock Posters and Fashion of the 1960s – Portland Art Museum
October 19–March 30, 2025
Portland Art Museum, Oregon
Psychedelic Rock Posters and Fashion of the 1960s reveals the passion and creativity of the era through the iconic rock posters of San Francisco and beyond. The Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco was an incubator for ideas, expression, social thought, and, above all, music. Young people from across the nation gathered there to explore alternative ways of living and to challenge contemporary paradigms. At the heart of it all was the psychedelic experience, or an altered state of consciousness.
To capture the heady experience of life and music at this time, poster artists invented a graphic language to communicate the excitement of rock concerts, which featured liquid light shows and film projections. They drew on disparate historical precedents such as Art Nouveau, Wild West posters, and Victorian engraving and combined them with vibrating color, inventive lettering, and witty and provocative design. The exhibition brings together more than 200 rock posters, including work by the “big five” designers of the day—Rick Griffin, Alton Kelley, Victor Moscoso, Stanley Mouse, and Wes Wilson—as well as other superb talents, such as Bonnie MacLean and Bob “Raphael” Schnepf.
Fashion both reflected and influenced the psychedelic look of the posters. The exhibition showcases approximately 20 eclectic vintage styles ranging from embroidered denim and hippy fringe to crochet and velvet.
Psychedelic Rock Posters and Fashion of the 1960s draws from the collection of the Portland Art Museum, most of which comes from a major donation from Gary Westford, who serves as a consultant on the project. Key loans round out the visual story of the psychedelic era.
The exhibition is curated by Mary Weaver Chapin, Ph.D., Curator of Prints and Drawings. Supported in part by Exhibition Series Sponsors.
portlandartmuseum.org
2024.10.13 Psychedelic Rock Posters and Fashion of the 1960s. Installation for Bill Ham Lights at Portland Art Museum.
Photo by Gary Westford
2024.10.19 Bill Ham Lights Projection at Portland Art Museum (Courtesy: Portland Art Museum)
MOONALICE 420 GATHERING OF THE TRIBE 2024, 23 POSTER SET
12.75″ x 17.25″ limited edition offset lithograph printed poster
20” x 20” promo/social media material
1920pix x 1080pix stage backdrop
Light painting by Bill Ham. Light painting photo and poster design by emi
Moonalice Poster Store – 420 Poster Set 2024
Light by Bill Ham: One Time, One Chance 9/14 – 10/29/23
The Haight Street Art Center presents “Light by Bill Ham: One Time, One Chance,” an exhibition of almost 40 acrylic-on-canvas paintings from the past five years by artist Bill Ham. September 14 – October 29, 2023.
While many in the rock-poster community know of Bill Ham for the light shows he ran in the late 1960s, particularly at the Avalon Ballroom, Ham always thought of his work in projected light as fine art, variously referring to it as “kinetic Abstract Expressionism” or “electric action painting.” From the beginning, San Francisco’s daily newspapers agreed, sending their first-tier art critics to report on his work as early as January 1966. The favorable coverage that ensued led to a series of performances with jazz musicians in 1967 at the San Francisco Museum of Art, followed by a half century of similar events around the world, whether at the artist’s Light Sound Dimension Theatre on California Street or arts institutions across Europe, where Ham lived for three years in the early 1970s.
Included in the exhibition are multiple groupings of paintings in grids, columns, and rows-because Ham paints his canvases from all sides as they lay flat, they cannot be said to have a top or a bottom, which means Ham’s show at the Haight Street Art Center will present his paintings in just one of tens of thousands of possible ways. Also included in the exhibition is a selection of vintage rock posters bearing his name, a DVD documenting recent Ham light shows, and several pieces of light-show equipment, among them an overhead projector upon which dishes of colored liquids were manipulated by the artist to create transient, abstract compositions.
The Haight Street Art Center is located at 215 Haight Street, just west of Laguna. Hours are noon to 6, Thursday to Sunday.
Thank you so much to all the people for joining to the opening reception on Thursday September 14.
For more information, visit haightstreetart.org
Curator: Ben Marks
Photos by emi
