The Art of the Fillmore

Book excerpt: Legendary impresario Bill Graham began in January 1966 to commission posters to promote the concerts he was putting on at San Francisco’s Fillmore auditorium. The poster artists followed the revolutionary mandate of the sixties consciousness, creating vivid, irreverent banners that reflected their own sense of poetics, style, and wit. What resulted were signature juxtapositions of design, lettering, and color that spawned a brand new art form. Their muse was the cosmic synergy that then abounded, fueled in part by LSD. These posters have since come to occupy a place in art history while surviving priceless artifacts of rock archeology. Published in cooperation with Bill Graham Presents, this is an intoxicating compendium of the funkiest posters of the century. Highlighted in this unique, lavishly printed full-color volume are the original numbered and unnumbered series created exclusively for the San Francisco and New York Fillmore dance concerts. The more than 400 hand-drawn posters, handbills, tickets, and photographs feature art by Wes Wilson, Bonnie MacLean, Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley, Rick Griffin, Lee Conklin, Greg Irons, Randy Tuten, David Byrd, David Singer, and Norman Orr.