The roar of a lion that the hippies marvelled at A few remarks about the iconographic sources of the so-called psychedelic art in the milieu of American graphic artists from the 1964-1968 period*

Abstract

JUSTYNA CHOJNACKA (National Museum in Wroclaw) / The roar of a lion that
the hippies marvelled at. A few remarks about the iconographic sources of the
so-called psychedelic art in the milieu of American graphic artists from
the 1964–1968 period
The subject of this article is the analysis of the group of early projects from the
series “The Family Dog” (1966–1968) which is the starting point for a series of
posters created in the spirit of the so-called psychedelic art and indicates its origins
and defines the direction of evolution in the field of graphics in San Francisco in
the second half of the 1960s.
The aim is to indicate and discuss the stylistic features as well as iconographic
and cultural sources of the model project Paul Butterfield designed by Wes Wilson
and Chet Helms in 1966. The selected design is an excellent material for analysis
due to the elements used in the composition, characteristic of a larger group of
objects related to the visual identification of the Haight-Ashbury district in San
Francisco in the 1965–1968 period.