The essay I wrote about psychedelic art for Communication Arts earlier this year had a word limit so there was little mention of the way the psychedelic style was swiftly co-opted by advertising and commercial art as a means of reaching a youthful audience. This is a really a subject in itself, the way in which an aesthetic that was countercultural in 1965 was becoming mainstream by 1968, and was still rippling through the world of graphic design in the early 1970s.
Elaine Hanelock’s posters of Hollywood stars of the 1920s and 30s were published by Royal Screen Craft Inc, Los Angeles, in 1968, and combine two trends: psychedelic art and the nostalgia for old Hollywood that emerged in the mid-60s. There are ten posters in the set: The Marx Brothers, Clara Bow (the “It Girl”), Mae West & WC Fields, Laurel & Hardy, John Barrymore, Charlie Chaplin, Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Will Rogers, and Wallace Beery & Marie Dressler. Nobody seems to know anything about Elaine Hanelock’s career elsewhere but her posters continue to find an audience among collectors.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• David Chestnutt’s psychedelic fairy tales
• Yellow Submarine comic books
• Heinz Edelmann
I was walking through a store in Highland Park here in Los Angeles and came across a copy of the Will Rogers poster. I saw only the top of it, but the post was fresh in my mind so I knew at once what it was. It was the only one from the collection they had. The guy up front said they had one other but they sold it. I asked if he knew who was on it, but he just remembered that the background was “…green, I think.”