“A Brief Biography of Wes Wilson
by Michael Erlewine

Wes Wilson, who is generally acknowledged as the father of the ’60s rock concert poster, was born Robert Wesley Wilson, on July 15, 1937, in Sacramento, California. Wilson grew up without the special interest in art that is typical of most of his contemporary poster artists. Instead, he was more interested in nature and the outdoors, studying forestry and horticulture at a small junior college in Auburn, California. He attended San Francisco State, but dropped out in 1963, where his major, at that time, had become philosophy.

[SinglePic not found]Wilson’s first poster was self published. Done in 1965, it has been nicknamed the “Are We Next?” poster. It notoriously features a swastika within an American flag motif, a protest by Wilson to the ever-increasing U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. It is a clear example of Wilson’s politics, and his willingness to speak out and be counted continues to this very day.

Wilson’s introduction to the Bay Area scene is an example of serendipity at its finest. The time was late 1965 and early 1966, and the whole San Francisco alternative culture scene was just emerging. We then bring together Wes Wilson, who had a natural talent for art and an interest in printing, with Bob Carr , who had formed, in his basement, the small firm Contact Printing. Carr was in touch with the whole San Francisco beat poetry and jazz scene, which was now in the process of transforming itself. Wilson, who had become Carr’s assistant and partner, was doing the basic layout design for most of the work. The press also did handbills for the San Francisco Mime Troup fundraising benefits, the so-called ‘Appeal’ parties, as well as for the Merry Prankster Acid Test s. The Mime Troupe and the Acid Tests were linked to the emerging dance-hall scene through this series of benefit concerts, so it is no surprise that the new dance venues, like the Avalon Ballroom and Fillmore Auditorium , soon found their way to Contact Printing . Wilson designed the handbill for the first Trips Festival , now considered one of the seed events marking the advent of the emerging San Francisco scene. He also attended this event and was deeply moved by what he saw and experienced.

Before long, Wilson was doing the posters for promoter Chet Helms — his shows at the Open Theater. It was Wilson who designed the original logo for the Family Dog. Helms went on to use him as the primary artist for Family Dog at the Avalon Ballroom. Soon he was doing that, plus posters for Bill Graham and the Fillmore Auditorium. After several months, Wilson stopped producing for the Family Dog venue and concentrated almost exclusively on posters for Bill Graham and the Fillmore events. He cites that with Chet Helms and the Avalon Ballroom, he was often given a theme around which he was asked to improvise, while with Bill Graham and the Fillmore, he was given complete freedom to design whatever he wanted. Wilson enjoyed the added artistic freedom.

Wilson is also reported to have been inspired by Alphonse Mucha, Van Gogh, Gustav Klimt, and Egon Schiele. Somewhere around this time, a friend showed him a copy of a 1908 poster done by the Viennese Secessionist artist, Alfred Roller. It contained an alphabet and lettering style quite similar to what Wilson had been doing and marked a direction toward which he aspired. It was not long before Wilson absorbed the Roller style, altering it to his own needs. What followed was an explosion of lettering creativity that changed the poster scene permanently.

Wes Wilson single-handedly pioneered what is now known as the psychedelic poster. His style of filling all available space with lettering, of creating fluid forms made from letters, and using flowing letters to create shapes became the standard that most psychedelic artists followed. It helped put the “psychedelic” in the art. The first clear example of this, and a key piece in Wilson’s history, was the poster BG-18, done for a show with the Association at the Fillmore Auditorium. Set in a background of green is a swirling flame-form of red letters. With this poster came a new concept in the art of that time, perhaps the first true ‘psychedelic poster.’

Then, in late 1966, Wilson created a poster for the Winterland venue that has been nicknamed “The Sound.” It combines two aspects of Wilson’s style that are unmistakable: his ability to fill all available space with vibrant, flowing letters (mentioned above) and his admiration and respect for the feminine form. In fact, this is one of a handful of posters from that era that are considered representative of the entire period. . . In this writer’s opinion, Wilson’s treatment of women and the feminine form is one of his most lasting contributions to the poster art of the sixties. Not deliberately erotic, his nudes never skirt pornography. Instead, his admiration and appreciation for the feminine form and all that it represents is clear. Wilson’s nudes are definitive of the period.

In summary, it is safe to say that the psychedelic poster, as we have come to know it, was defined by Wes Wilson sometime in the summer of 1966. Wilson pretty much reigned supreme among the poster artists at that time. But, by mid 1967, there were any number of good artists, many of whom had cut their teeth on Wilson’s lettering and style. A disagreement with Bill Graham about what had been agreed to, as far as payment, led to Wilson resigning his tenure as the primary Fillmore poster artist. Fairness to him in these matters was a matter of principle. Wilson did his last poster for Bill Graham in May of 1967, although he continued to produce posters for a number of other venues, including several more for the Avalon Ballroom.

In 1968, Wilson was surprised to learn that he was to receive a $5000 award by the National Endowment for the Arts for “his contributions to American Art.” In fact, Wilson, who was considered a leader, if not the “key” artist, of the psychedelic poster scene, was also profiled in such major magazines as Life, Time, and Variety magazines. Wilson also created a new technique in enameling glass as art and developed a watercolor style, which was well received at his one-man show in San Francisco in 1973. Then, in 1976, Wilson relocated his family to a cattle farm in the Missouri Ozarks.

With the publication of the, now classic, poster book, “The Art of Rock ,” Wilson was invited, in 1989, to exhibit his classic poster work at the Springfield Art Museum . The success of the resulting show, “Looking Back: Rock Posters of the 1960s by Wes Wilson,” rekindled Wilson’s interest in the poster scene and he went on to create and publish “Off The Wall™,” an in-depth journal on poster art and contemporary ideas. The nine issues of this, now out-of-print, publication are eagerly sought after by poster enthusiasts. Wilson was also the executive producer of three Rock Art Expos — large poster conventions on the West Coast. Over the years, Wilson has also been featured in a number of gallery exhibits, both his classic and his contemporary works.

Today, Wes Wilson creates paintings, but still occasionally does new posters or new art of interest. He is in good health and has six children and ten grandchildren — so far. He and his wife of over 40 years, Eva, who is now a doctor of psychology, are still living on their farm in southwest Missouri.”

“How many of you who, like me, are of a ‘certain age,’ remember the pop and psychedelic art phenomenon that emerged with such force majeure during the mid 60s? I think it would be a very safe bet to say that not one self-respecting ‘child of the sixties’ would have forgotten the incredible art form that was so reflective of the culture of the period.

Just recently, whilst logged on to a friend’s website, I came across a wonderful series of psychedelic posters from this period. Apparently designer Paul Olsen had been given them in 1966 by Bill Graham, a music promoter who arranged for bands to play at the Avalon Ballroom and Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco. In all there are 232 posters in the collection created by such graphic design luminaries of the day as Victor Moscoso, Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelly, Rick Griffin and Wes Wilson. Of this group it was probably Wes Wilson who became the best known and most influential. Certainly he was the most prolific and seemed to have enjoyed, if not a monopoly, then certainly the lion’s share of the poster design commissions for the Fillmore Auditorium.

So, with a heady mixture of nostalgia and fervent admiration for work that combines an incredible kaleidoscope of vibrant acid colors with highly creative hand-drawn lettering and illustration to promote gigs for bands like Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and The Byrds, I decided the time had come for me to share my passion by reviewing, from a typographic standpoint, a few of Wes Wilson’s wonderful poster works.

As I began to re-familiarise myself with the style of the posters, it didn’t take long for me to establish that I was on territory I knew only too well. Influences such as the Art Nouveau movement, Victorian and Edwardian display lettering and a philosophy inspired by the great French poster designers of the late 1800s, who harmonised form, colour and typography, were styles which I studied avidly during my own typographic apprenticeship. These are the very same influences that helped Wes Wilson establish his poster design style that became his trademark.

Born in 1937, Robert Wesley Wilson, except for a few night school classes, had no real formal training as a graphic designer. His most favoured form of lettering developed as a direct influence of Alfred Roller’s lettering for an exhibition of Secessionist design in 1903. This lettering was generally rectangular in form and therefore ideally suited for Wilson whose work often involved wrapping words around predetermined, free-flowing areas in order to fill up space. White space being considered bête noire to the psychedelic poster designer whose style of work was intended as a reaction to the prevailing ‘clean’ Swiss style of typography!

It would be neither practical or indeed necessary to review anything other than a few posters from Wes Wilson’s vast portfolio since logging on to Paul Olsen’s website will provide you with a visual panorama of almost the entire collection. What I have therefore done is to concentrate on selected items which I believe reflect the range of his work and the influences that helped fashion it.

Wes Wilson disappeared from the San Francisco scene as quickly as he and his contemporaries and their highly individual art form breezed in, heading for the Ozark mountains in Missouri in the early 1970s to live, apparently, a reclusive lifestyle. Despite efforts on my part, I could not find any news of his whereabouts or what became of him or, indeed, whether he is still alive. No photographs, nothing. His legacy though is an incredible art form that forty-five years on is revered as truly classic of its time.

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Designed for the Bill Graham Presents company for a gig in San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium featuring bands Grateful Dead, The Canned Heat Blues Band and Otis Rush.

When I think of the 60s I think of images like this. A real classic of its time with practically every inch of space taken up with undulating, free-flowing, Art Nouveau influenced lines, vibrant colours and Alfred Roller inspired lettering designed to fit tightly into the available spaces. To the San Francisco poster designers, legibility was considered secondary to the look and feel of the overall design. Working on the theory that if people were really interested in the image, then they would take the trouble to work it out!

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Designed for the Bill Graham Presents company for a Fillmore Auditorium production featuring The Byrds, The Wildflower and a play called The Dutchman.

Despite being a rather more structured design it is still representative of the period. Once again it is clear that the lettering has been inspired by Alfred Roller’s lettering with the typography designed to fill all available space. The ‘Byrds’ lettering has a three-dimensional appearance and the counters more open, thereby increasing legibility and allowing the ‘main attraction’ to be easily read without having to work it out.

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An early Wes Wilson poster featuring three of the popular bands of the day for a gig at the Avalon Ballroom.

Not what you would normally associate with the designer but the lettering is clearly influenced by the Austrian Secession movement in which the style is quite geometric and in complete contrast to the sinuous, flowing lines of the French and Belgium Art Nouveau movement. In fact, so geometric is the ‘WONDERLAND’ heading, it could almost have been taken from the extreme geometry of the Soviet Constructivists. The design of ‘GRASS ROOTS’ is derived from a series of letters called Newport Monograms and both this and the ‘AVALON BALLROOM’ lettering is Secessionist in style. However, the heavy horizontal and light vertical strokes with soft, rounded terminals are definitely 1960s features.

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Another early Wes Wilson creation (with illustrations by Heinrich Kley) commissioned by the Bill Graham Presents company for a dance concert featuring The Turtles and the Oxford Circle at the Fillmore Auditorium.

A slightly more casual form of lettering but which, once again, is unmistakably Art Nouveau in origin. This is especially true of the ‘TURTLES’ heading in which the letters have been overlapped and intertwined to create a pastiche of the extravagance of Art Nouveau style. In this poster the lettering seem to have been influenced more by Peter Behrens’s Edel Gotisch and Otto Eckmann’s Eckmann Schrift typefaces rather than Alfred Roller’s lettering. The choice of the rather simplified Gothic or Old English style of capitals used to promote ‘OXFORD CIRCLE’ is somewhat surprising. Maybe Wes felt that a very English style of typeface would be just perfect for a very English sounding name!

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This poster is another selected from the early poster design work of Wes Wilson and which was created for a dance concert at the Avalon Ballroom.

Except for the “EUPHORIA’ headline, which is clearly Secessionist in origin, most of the other lettering seems to be based on regular roman and sans serif typefaces. A somewhat unusual break by Wes from the Art Nouveau and Secession inspired lettering which became his trademark. That said, there is a suggestion of the ubiquitous Arnold Böcklin typeface about the style of the large 6 and 7 numerals.

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A quite beautiful poster full of the ambiance of 60s psychedelia designed for Bill Graham Presents to promote a dance concert featuring Grateful Dead, one of the most popular bands of the day, and supported by Tim Rose, Hey Joe and Big Mama Mae Thornton.

One of Wes’s later posters expressing a confidence in his art and his style. Once again Alfred Roller is the inspiration behind the lettering which, in the true tradition of San Francisco poster art of the day, fills up every available space. It is interesting to note here that Wes has introduced a softness to the letterforms so they harmonize perfectly with the panels and illustration. In doing so, they have become a little easier to read.

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This poster is one of my favourites. Not what you would expect in terms of style for the period, but containing very strong lettering and typographic treatment.

Designed for an American Independence day holiday celebration ball at San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium which featured all of the main bands of the day, including Great Society who eventually became absorbed into Jefferson Airplane. In my opinion Wes has captured all the strength of Secessionist style lettering and typography with three columns of carefully justified panels of text. Again, we can see a suggestion of curved corners which was very much a 1960s trait. Perhaps the only letdown is the rather crude style of the large 2 and 3 figures.

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Another rather formal layout that, to my mind, has a suggestion of having been influenced by Juke Box fascia. Designed by Wes for a Bill Graham Presents music and dance extravaganza at San Francisco’s cavernous Winterland stadium.

Like other of Wes’s poster typography, lettering, which appears to have been influenced by a number of different sources, has been carefully created to align left and right. At the top the ‘Butterfield Blues Band’ and ‘Jefferson Airplane’ lettering is more Victorian/Edwardian in style whereas ‘Grateful Dead’ and ‘Winterland’ is unmistakably Art Nouveau. How many real type buffs will recognise Miller & Richard’s much used Bookman ampersand?

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Another of my favourites because it’s a superb example of psychedelic poster art from the master for a Bill Graham Presents dance concert at the Fillmore Auditorium.

Again, it seems as though the lettering has been inspired by a number of Art Nouveau typefaces, particularly the kind which resemble some of those created by Otto Eckmann and Peter Behrens. However, the “LIGHTNING HOPKINS’ lettering in the centre of the poster is associated more with late 19th century display typestyles. If I’m not mistaken, this was one of several from the same period made available for photo-typesetting by the American Compugraphic company, (later to become Agfa Compugraphic) when they launched a selection from the T.J. Lyons collection in the early 1970s.

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The lettering by Alfred Roller in this poster he designed for a Secessionist exhibition in 1903 was the major source of inspiration for Wes Wilson and the other San Francisco poster artists of the 1960s period. Just recently, well known type/lettering designer and illustrator Leslie Cabarga designed his Love and Peace typefaces based on this very lettering.

Alfred Roller was one of the founder members of the influential Vienna Secession for whom he designed numerous exhibition posters. He became president of the movement in 1902.

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The Art Nouveau style of celebrated Czech designer Alphonse Mucha was another major source of influence to Wes Wilson and his contemporaries. This is especially true in the case of Stanley Mouse who unashamedly ‘lifted’ the female illustration from this Mucha poster of 1896 advertising Job cigarette papers, in order to create a poster for an Avalon Ballroom gig in 1966.

One thing that wasn’t copied was the colours; Mucha’s work, and that of the Art Nouveau movement in general, being almost always created using subdued pastel shades and natural pale browns and greens as opposed to the bright, clashing hues which, from Wilson’s own admission were, the direct influence of LSD drug induced acid trips! One of the favourite recreational pastimes of the ‘Hippy’ culture!

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While the work of the American West Coast poster designer tended to be highly elaborate, by contrast, on the East Coast, Milton Glaser’s much published Bob Dylan poster for CBS Records in 1966 expresses much more restraint.

Although of course the hair is highly stylized the rest, including the simple silhouette profile and geometric lettering, keep the overall design relatively simple. The lettering was later developed by Milton Glaser into a full blown typeface called Baby Teeth.

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Three typefaces in the Art Nouveau style that were also an influence to Wes Wilson. The sixties period experienced a major revival of this particular art form and, as a consequence, typefaces designed in the style also attracted similar interest: The emerging phototypesetting industry making it cheap and easy to create fonts for commercial use.

Face Photosetting, a London based company, led the way by launching a number of Art Nouveau revivals which were taken from Ludwig Petzendorfer’s ‘A Treasury of Authentic Art Nouveau Alphabets’. A selection of these, which included Arnold Böcklin, Edel Gotisch and Eckmann Schrift, were made more widely available when Letraset produced them for their dry transfer product.”