They were immediate collectibles, ephemera that became prized pieces of portable history, preserved and treasured over time until they emerged as highly valued works of art in their own right. The posters bloomed in windows and sprouted on telephone poles around San Francisco, and often disappeared just as quickly. Stanley Mouse remembers with pleasure seeing people clustered around the latest poster, trying to decipher them. The ways that so many layers of meaning inhere in this most malleable and disposable of mass-produced art has fascinated critics, historians, and curators in much the same way that understanding and appreciating the posters was a defining ritual of the Haight-Ashbury. Part of that has to do with how the artform harnesses the power of compression: every poster represents a constellation of stories, from the event it advertises to the inspiration it reifies to the cultural reception it inspires and ultimately commemorates. After the music, posters are the primary artifacts prized by fans and collectors an industry surrounds Grateful Dead poster art now, as collectors, dealers and cultural heritage institutions continue to develop the field. It means that posters are a powerful and intruiguing way of looking at the Grateful Dead phenomenon. Poster artist Alton Kelley enthused, “What a fantastic name that was! It was the name of names.” His opinion was widely shared, and his peers and successors would continue to explore and define a remarkable iconography and visual landscape first charted by Kelley, his partner Stanley Mouse, and the other artists who created the San Francisco poster scene. For thirty years, Grateful Dead concerts were occasions to continue the remarkable renaissance of poster art that first flourished in the Haight-Ashbury in the late sixties. The Grateful Dead were only one of several hundred rock groups documented by the heyday of San Francisco rock posters, from 1965 to 1971, but as Hunter also pointed out, “The Grateful Dead and San Francisco ’60s art are well nigh indistinguishable, even when not specifically Dead related.” Part of that had to do with their name. As Robert Hunter reflected, “I’ve come to realize that the art movement that accompanied the rise of the Dead is as much a part of what we became in the public eye as the songs and our playing of them.” Poster art is one of the most important aspects of the Grateful Dead phenomenon, and it forms a vital dimension of the rich visual culture of the Deadhead experience. This is not surprising: after the music, posters were the first related artform to emerge from the Haight-Ashbury, and they not only chronicled the city’s vibrant music scene, they also documented the Dead’s early years. It’s what art is.įor casual visitors, the most commonly requested part of the Grateful Dead Archive is the band’s poster collection. I just can’t help looking at these and going BOING! I don’t know why. You know how the records you listened to were the background music of your life? Well, the posters are the front pages, the covers of your life. A poster unlocks memories just like a record does. The Posters of the Grateful Dead Archive There are so many levels of this stuff.
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