Gallery · Room 12 · San Francisco, 1966–1969
Psychedelic posters
Concert posters for San Francisco's rock ballrooms, with melting lettering and colors that vibrate.
Wall text
In the mid-1960s San Francisco was the hub of the hippie scene. Bill Graham's concerts at the Fillmore Auditorium and Chet Helms's at the Avalon Ballroom needed a new poster nearly every week.
Wes Wilson adapted lettering from an Art Nouveau and Expressionism exhibition and swelled it until the text was nearly unreadable, in colors meant to echo the light shows. Victor Moscoso had studied color theory at Yale under Josef Albers, then turned Albers's lessons around to make colors clash and flicker. Bonnie MacLean, Graham's secretary, had no formal art training and took over the Fillmore posters when Wilson left.
Hard to read on purpose, the posters rewarded anyone who stopped to decode them. They remain a high point of lettering used as image.