Document Type
Article
Abstract
[First paragraph]
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.
Repository Citation
Montgomery, Scott B.. "Making the Posters Dance: Victor Moscoso’s Four-Dimensional Posters and Adventures in Exhibition Concept, Design, and Archiving." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 16, no. 1, 2016, pp. 1–22. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol16/iss1/13