Heart and Torch: Rick Griffin's Transcendence

$200.00

Heart and Torch: Rick Griffin's Transcendence – the out-of-print Laguna Art Museum retrospective of the legendary surf, comix and psychedelic poster artist Rick Griffin (1944–1991).

About the book

Published by Gingko Press with the Laguna Art Museum to accompany its 2007 exhibition, this book surveys three decades of Griffin's work, from his Surfer magazine cartoons and the Murphy character, through the San Francisco rock-poster era, Zap Comix and Grateful Dead album art, to his later visionary and religious work.

With essays by Doug Harvey and others, a chronology, and page after page of full-colour reproductions, it is the essential reference on one of the defining artists of 1960s counterculture. Long out of print and much sought after by collectors of surf, psychedelic and underground comix art.

Rick Griffin's influence runs through almost every corner of California visual culture. As a teenager he created 'Murphy', the grinning surf grom who became the unofficial mascot of Surfer magazine. In San Francisco in the mid-1960s he became one of the 'Big Five' psychedelic poster artists alongside Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley, Victor Moscoso and Wes Wilson, producing posters for the Avalon Ballroom and the Fillmore and designing the lettering and cover art for the Grateful Dead's Aoxomoxoa. His work for Zap Comix with Robert Crumb helped define underground comix, and his later religious art – including illustrations for the Gospel of John – revealed a visionary, deeply personal side.

Heart and Torch brings all of this together in one generously illustrated volume, reproducing posters, album covers, surf art, comic pages, paintings, sketchbook work and ephemera, much of it rarely seen. It has since become one of the most sought-after books on 1960s poster art and surf culture.

About the author

Doug Harvey is a Los Angeles-based artist, curator and critic, long-time art critic for the LA Weekly. He is joined by contributors from the surf and art worlds who knew Griffin and his work first-hand.

Ideal for: collectors of psychedelic rock posters, Grateful Dead memorabilia, surf culture and underground comix, and anyone interested in 1960s counterculture art.

Details

  • Author: Doug Harvey (with Greg Escalante et al.)
  • Publisher: Gingko Press / Laguna Art Museum
  • Published: 2007
  • Format: Softcover
  • Pages: 156

Carefully packed and shipped from Australia. Questions about this copy, or want more photos? Get in touch.

Heart and Torch: Rick Griffin's Transcendence – the out-of-print Laguna Art Museum retrospective of the legendary surf, comix and psychedelic poster artist Rick Griffin (1944–1991).

About the book

Published by Gingko Press with the Laguna Art Museum to accompany its 2007 exhibition, this book surveys three decades of Griffin's work, from his Surfer magazine cartoons and the Murphy character, through the San Francisco rock-poster era, Zap Comix and Grateful Dead album art, to his later visionary and religious work.

With essays by Doug Harvey and others, a chronology, and page after page of full-colour reproductions, it is the essential reference on one of the defining artists of 1960s counterculture. Long out of print and much sought after by collectors of surf, psychedelic and underground comix art.

Rick Griffin's influence runs through almost every corner of California visual culture. As a teenager he created 'Murphy', the grinning surf grom who became the unofficial mascot of Surfer magazine. In San Francisco in the mid-1960s he became one of the 'Big Five' psychedelic poster artists alongside Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley, Victor Moscoso and Wes Wilson, producing posters for the Avalon Ballroom and the Fillmore and designing the lettering and cover art for the Grateful Dead's Aoxomoxoa. His work for Zap Comix with Robert Crumb helped define underground comix, and his later religious art – including illustrations for the Gospel of John – revealed a visionary, deeply personal side.

Heart and Torch brings all of this together in one generously illustrated volume, reproducing posters, album covers, surf art, comic pages, paintings, sketchbook work and ephemera, much of it rarely seen. It has since become one of the most sought-after books on 1960s poster art and surf culture.

About the author

Doug Harvey is a Los Angeles-based artist, curator and critic, long-time art critic for the LA Weekly. He is joined by contributors from the surf and art worlds who knew Griffin and his work first-hand.

Ideal for: collectors of psychedelic rock posters, Grateful Dead memorabilia, surf culture and underground comix, and anyone interested in 1960s counterculture art.

Details

  • Author: Doug Harvey (with Greg Escalante et al.)
  • Publisher: Gingko Press / Laguna Art Museum
  • Published: 2007
  • Format: Softcover
  • Pages: 156

Carefully packed and shipped from Australia. Questions about this copy, or want more photos? Get in touch.

Rick Griffin was one of three or four quintessential American designers of the late 1960s. His marriage of comics, surrealism, art nouveau, and symbolism into a decided visual language of sex, drugs, and rock and roll helped define un era that, contrary to revisionist theory, was the most unique of the late twentieth century. From Griffin's emblematic logo for Rolling Stone to his opus in typographical gibberish, Man from Utopia, Griffin was a linchpin of the psychedelic epoch.

-STEVEN HELLER, ART DIRECTOR OF THE New York Times Book Review, EDITOR OF THE AIGA Journal of Graphic Design

To me, Rick Griffin embodied that era more than all the other artists, as good as they were some of them, because he came out of the surf culture, which was one of the most direct tributaries to the counter culture revolution of the sixties-that same middle class rebellion that was the hippies.'

- JANN WENNER, CO-FOUNDER OF Rolling Stone MAGAZINE AND FOUNDER OF THE ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME

Rick Griffin. A Genius. How on earth did he come up with all this stuff? Oh, I know-LSD. His San Francisco poster for the Doors is the best psychedelic poster we ever had done.

-RAY MANZAREK, CO-FOUNDER AND KEYBOARDIST OF THE DOORS

Presented in a lush oversize format, this comprehensive, career-spanning catalog features work from an exhibition organized by Laguna Art Museum. Heart and Torch: Rick Griffin s Transcendence is the first book and major museum retrospective to focus exclusively on Griffin s life s work. A cult figure that set the iconographic terrain for three distinct west coast subcultures, Griffin has been hugely influential on contemporary visual culture. Rick Griffin's poster art for seminal psychedelic era rock concerts is the stuff of legend, simultaneously his illustration work for surf magazines and cartoons for underground comics have arguably had equal impact in their respective genres. Less well known, but equally compelling is the impressive body of work Griffin created as a born again Christian starting in the early 1970's up until his untimely death in 1991. This fascinating book includes in-depth essays by Doug Harvey and Greg Escalante a foreword by Bolton Colburn, an interview with Chuck Fromm and further writing about Griffin by Chaz Bojorquez, Gordon McClelland and Jacaeber Kastor.