Not currently on display at the V&A

Bill Graham Presents

Poster
1966 (designed)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

The Fillmore in San Francisco is a historic music venue, named after its original location at the intersection of Fillmore Street and Geary Boulevard. Known as the Fillmore Auditorium in the mid-1960s, concert promoter Bill Graham began a series of concerts featuring bands from the counterculture of the time. In 1968, due to his spiralling success, he moved to a larger venue which he named Fillmore West. Having closed in 1971, and after extensive repair work to fix earthquake damage, Graham's was revived when Live Nation reopened the original Fillmore venue in 1994.

San Francisco in the mid-1960s was the hub of the LSD and Hippie scene and the cultural and political rebellion of 1967's Summer of Love. The resulting influence of these factors on the artists of the area created the fantastic psychedelic posters of the Fillmore. Art dealer Jacaeber Kastor said of the posters, "They couldn't just tell you the information about the show. They had to tell you what kind of people you might meet, what kind of far out trip you might have or perhaps even reveal the mysteries of the universe. Wow. Quantum mechanics, visual mudwrestling, Acid test pop quiz on a phone pole!"

The artist of this poster, Wes Wilson, was a designer in the San Francisco small press company Contact, creating posters for Bill Graham's Fillmore and rival promoter Chet Helms' Avalon Ballroom. He stopped working for Helms in August 1966, as he received more artistic freedom from Graham. He adapted his lettering style from an Art Nouveau and Expressionism exhibition, expanding the outlines and shapes exaggeratedly, creating intense patterns for the backgrounds. He used vibrant and contrasting colours, which, combined with the patterns, often made the text almost indecipherable. His choice of colours was to reflect the nature of the stimulating light shows that accompanied the concerts.

This gig at the Fillmore Auditorium featured Grateful Dead, an American rock band formed in 1965 in San Francisco. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, fusing elements of rock, folk, psychedelia, and space rock and for live performances of long musical improvisation. Also on the bill was Big Mama Mae Thornton, a singer and songwriter who had big hits with Hound Dog and Ball and Chain in the 1950s, which were later performed to even greater success by Elvis Presley and Janis Joplin respectively.


Object details

Categories
Object type
TitleBill Graham Presents (series title)
Materials and techniques
Lithography on paper
Brief description
Poster advertising Love, Moby Grape and Lee Michaels at the Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, 2, 3 and 4 December 1966.
Physical description
Poster advertising Grateful Dead, Big Mama Mae Thornton, Tim Rose and Hey Joe at the Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, 9, 10 & 11 December 1966. Purple background, with pattern and text in yellow and red, and illustration of a face in purple.
Dimensions
  • Height: 56.3cm
  • Width: 35.8cm
Style
Copy number
Second Edition
Credit line
Given by the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum
Object history
Transferred as part of a collection from the Cooper Hewitt Museum, New York, in 1985.
Subjects depicted
Place depicted
Summary
The Fillmore in San Francisco is a historic music venue, named after its original location at the intersection of Fillmore Street and Geary Boulevard. Known as the Fillmore Auditorium in the mid-1960s, concert promoter Bill Graham began a series of concerts featuring bands from the counterculture of the time. In 1968, due to his spiralling success, he moved to a larger venue which he named Fillmore West. Having closed in 1971, and after extensive repair work to fix earthquake damage, Graham's was revived when Live Nation reopened the original Fillmore venue in 1994.

San Francisco in the mid-1960s was the hub of the LSD and Hippie scene and the cultural and political rebellion of 1967's Summer of Love. The resulting influence of these factors on the artists of the area created the fantastic psychedelic posters of the Fillmore. Art dealer Jacaeber Kastor said of the posters, "They couldn't just tell you the information about the show. They had to tell you what kind of people you might meet, what kind of far out trip you might have or perhaps even reveal the mysteries of the universe. Wow. Quantum mechanics, visual mudwrestling, Acid test pop quiz on a phone pole!"

The artist of this poster, Wes Wilson, was a designer in the San Francisco small press company Contact, creating posters for Bill Graham's Fillmore and rival promoter Chet Helms' Avalon Ballroom. He stopped working for Helms in August 1966, as he received more artistic freedom from Graham. He adapted his lettering style from an Art Nouveau and Expressionism exhibition, expanding the outlines and shapes exaggeratedly, creating intense patterns for the backgrounds. He used vibrant and contrasting colours, which, combined with the patterns, often made the text almost indecipherable. His choice of colours was to reflect the nature of the stimulating light shows that accompanied the concerts.

This gig at the Fillmore Auditorium featured Grateful Dead, an American rock band formed in 1965 in San Francisco. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, fusing elements of rock, folk, psychedelia, and space rock and for live performances of long musical improvisation. Also on the bill was Big Mama Mae Thornton, a singer and songwriter who had big hits with Hound Dog and Ball and Chain in the 1950s, which were later performed to even greater success by Elvis Presley and Janis Joplin respectively.
Bibliographic references
  • Lemke, Gayle The Art of the Fillmore 1966-71, Thunder's Mouth Press, New York, 1999
  • Poster Collecting. Fillmore Poster. 06 August 2010.
Other number
BG 41 - Bill Graham's numbering system
Collection
Accession number
S.793-2010

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Record createdSeptember 22, 2010
Record URL
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