I was 17 during the Summer of Love 1967 and loving every minute
of it. I was working for underground papers, meeting underground
cartoonists, watching underground movies, going to underground concerts
(The Fugs at the Bridge), and even a few over-ground (well, kinda)
concerts at the Fillmore East (Janis, Jimmy, Jefferson, and Sly and
Family Stone) too. It seemed that the world belonged to us (and me) – the youth culture.
Art, design, fashion, style everything erupted and it was my generation
that caused the eruption. In retrospect Psychedelic design (the stuff
of Victor Moscoso, Rick Griffin, Stanley Mouse, et al) was a combo of
Vienna Secession and Victorian motifs, but at the time it was totally
ours. In fact, once vibrating color was added it was really totally
ours, the visionaries transported the old to a new level.
It
is hard to believe that the inexhaustible energy that reached its peak
and pique with the so-called Summer of Love in Haight Ashbury, San
Francisco, but also in Thompkins Square part in New York, and on scores
of campuses around the country – and let’s not forget London (The
Beatles and Stones and OZ (the magazine) and so much clothing) was
actually so short-lived. It was pretty had believe back then that it
would ever end – but it did, co-opted by mass-marketeers and
trivialized in the bargain. But that’s the nature of life, art, style,
and fashion.
Of course Psychedelic style has been revived many
times over the ensuing decades. But this year marks the fortieth
anniversary and a viable hook on which to hang an exhibition I just saw
at the Whitney in New York, which actually started in 2005 at The Tate in London.
Its
fun to see the posters, photos, and light shows (of which there are
many installations synched to the throbbing and ecstatic sounds of
Janis and Jimmy) but for all its nostalgic appeal – and despite its
intelligent marriage of art (from Robert Indiana to Yayoi Kusama (who I
knew back in the days), design, and music into a seamless
gesemtkunstwerk whole – there was something flat, forced, and fickle
about the result. All the “stuff” was represented but none of the heart
and soul. Two floors in the Whitney might not have been enough, or it
might have been too much. But last year’s Grey Gallery/Parsons exhibits
about Punk were more spirited. Surely forty years is long enough time
to pass before revisitation rights kick in, but partly because of the
installation and partly because it was a time that really had to be
experienced not exhibited, this show was more of a post-mortem than a
celebration.
Tomorrow I’ll comment on a more successful exhibit (at an otherwise stodgier museum) only a few blocks away.
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