{psychedelia} – Page 80 – { feuilleton }

The art of Bob Pepper

Forever Changes (1967) by Love.
Art by Bob Pepper, design by William S. Harvey.

Following yesterday’s post about Philip K Dick covers (and Erik Davis’s appraisal of the DAW cover), I decided to check out Bob Pepper’s work a bit more and it quickly became obvious I should have joined the dots with this particular artist years ago. Pepper’s work not only decorates one of the recognisable record sleeves of the late Sixties (above), he was working shortly afterwards as an illustrator on the celebrated series of fantasy reprints edited by Lin Carter for Ballantine books. Pepper’s connections with Elektra Records also saw him provide sleeve art for some of the eclectic releases on their Nonesuch label. What’s surprising to me now is the realisation that I’d been seeing his work for years in a variety of places and never noticed it was the same artist. Better late than never, I suppose.

Four more Dick covers for a series of six published in 1982 to coincide with the release of Blade Runner. As with the cover for A Scanner Darkly (in the earlier post) these paintings are all portraits.

A Voyage to Arcturus (1968) by David Lindsay.

It was the success of the publication of The Lord of the Rings in America which inspired Betty Ballantine to publish a line of fantasy classics in the late Sixties. The series began its run in 1969 and continued until 1974. Lin Carter was commissioned as editor and given free reign to choose any title he thought might be suitable with the result that many of the books in the series—obscurities such as Lud-in-the-mist by Hope Mirrlees—received their first paperback publication. Carter also reprinted personal favourites which frequently shifted from fantasy to outright horror, such as the titles from HP Lovecraft and William Hope Hodgson. The range and scope of this line is what makes the series so notable today and the books have become highly-collectable as a result. Many artists were involved in producing the distinctive cover designs and Pepper’s illustrations were featured on the covers for Mervyn Peake, Lord Dunsany and James Branch Cabell, among others. Unfortunately the various pages devoted to these books aren’t very good at showing the paintings to their best advantage. For a long time Pepper’s cover for A Voyage to Arcturus was one of the few editions available that managed to show a scene from the book, rather than a generic sword-wielding barbarian.

The Wild Bull (1968) by Morton Subotnick.

Nonesuch Records was Elektra’s subsidiary classical music label which not only produced classical recordings but also recordings from around the world in their Explorer series, and a range of original works of contemporary electronic music. I’m not positive that the sleeve above is a Pepper painting but it certainly looks like it. This is another surprise since I’ve had Morton Subnotnick‘s album on a reissue CD for years (with different artwork). The George Crumb recording below is Pepper’s work and I’ve had the original vinyl of that one for several years. The similarity between that sleeve and the one for Love is striking.

Flesh (1969) by Philip José Farmer.

Golden Rain – Balinese Gamelan Music – Ketjak: The Ramayana Monkey Dance (1969) by Various Artists.
Art by Bob Pepper, design by William S. Harvey.

Ancient Voices of Children (1971) by George Crumb.
Art by Bob Pepper, design by Robert W. Zingmark.

Driftglass (1971) by Samuel R. Delany.

Debussy’s Greatest Hits (1972).

Concerto For Harpsichord And Five Instruments by Manuel De Falla (no date).

Ellison Wonderland (1974) by Harlan Ellison.

Fiestas of Peru: Music of the High Andes (1975) by Various Artists.
Art by Bob Pepper, design by Jo Ann Gruber.

Flower Dance: Japanese Folk Melodies (no date) by Kofu Kikusui, The Noday Family, Nakagawa & Oishi.
Art by Bob Pepper, direction by William S. Harvey, design by Elaine Gongora.

Pepper is retired now but produced artwork for Dark Tower, a fantasy boardgame, in 1981. The game still has its enthusiasts, and this site features a short interview with the artist.

Update: more about the Ballantine covers.

Update 2: a large scan of the George Crumb cover art.

Update 3: More album and book covers added.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The album covers archive
• The book covers archive
• The illustrators archive

Previously on { feuilleton}
• Philip K Dick book covers
• Masonic fonts and the designer’s dark materials

The Realist

The Digger issue, August 1968.

Here’s something of major importance, The Realist Archive Project. Four complete issues online so far, with a promise of all 146 issues to be uploaded eventually. The Realist started out as a satirical magazine in the late Fifties and moved into the slipstream of the counter-culture as the Sixties progressed. Editor Paul Krassner is introduced in the RE/Search Pranks (1987) book thus:

Paul Krassner is famous for doing The Realist (1958-1974; now revived), described by OUI magazine as “the most satirical and irreverent journal to appear in America since the days of HL Mencken.” The Realist published explicit photos, outrageous cartoons, vicious satire, and extreme paranoid conspiracy theories on topics ranging from the Kennedy assassinations to Jonestown. When Mike Wallace asked him on a 60 Minutes interview about the difference between the underground press and mainstream media, he told him that Spiro Agnew was an anagram for Grow A Penis, adding, “The difference is that I could print that in the Realist, but it’ll be edited out of this program.” That prediction came true. Harry Reasoner said of Krassner that he “not only attacks establishment values; he attacks decency in general.”

During his lifetime of weird experiences and friendships with notables like Lenny Bruce and Timothy Leary, Krassner claims (among other things) to have taken LSD when he testified at the Chicago 8 trial, on the Johnny Carson show, with Groucho Marx, and with Squeaky Fromme and Sandra Good. In 1977 he became publisher of Hustler magazine for six months.

I first encountered the Realist from mentions in Robert Anton Wilson’s books (RAW was one of its writers) but, unlike UK undergrounds which often turned up secondhand, there was no way to ever see a copy over here. Hence the value of this archive. If you want an idea of Krassner’s outrageousness—which makes much of the political sniping of Private Eye seem very tame indeed—look no further than the May 1967 issue with its lead story describing Lyndon B Johnson fucking the dead John F Kennedy’s neck wound shortly before his being sworn in as president. And in the same issue there’s the notorious cartoon spread by Wally Wood depicting a host of Disney characters doing all the things that recently-deceased Uncle Walt wouldn’t allow them to do in the cartoons. That drawing was so scurrilous that it’s generally supposed Disney preferred not to sue for fear of giving it greater publicity.

The issue edited by the anarchist Diggers was altogether more serious, and the list of names involved shows a lineage connecting the Beats to the hippies:

Memo to the Reader

When Time magazine decided to do a cover story on the hippies last year, a cable to their San Francisco bureau instructed researchers to “go at the description and delineation of the subculture as if you were studying the Samoans or the Trobriand Islanders.”

Thus were they supposed to remain—a frozen fad for posterity.

But a few months ago, police rioted on Haight St. Next day, at a town hall meeting in the Straight Theater, the spectrum of reaction ranged from “Let’s have another be-in” to “We gotta get guns!” A compromise was reached: bottles painted Love were thrown at the cops.

And yet, the question remains—What is being defended?

This issue of the Realist, therefore, has been created entirely by The Diggers, in an attempt to convey the flavor and feeling-tone of a revolutionary community.

An inadequate list of the brothers and sisters whose work is represented in this document:

Antonin Artaud, Richard Avedon, Billy Batman, Peter Berg, Wally Berman, Richard Brautigan, Bryden, William Burroughs, Martin Carey, Neil Cassidy, Fidel Castro, Don Cochran, Peter Cohon, Gregory Corso, Dangerfield, Kirby Doyle, Bill Fritsch, Allen Ginsberg, Emmett Grogan, Dave Haselwood, George Hermes, Linn House, Lenore Kandel, Billy Landout, Norman Mailer, Don Martin, Michael McClure, George Metesky, George Montana, Malcolm X, Natural Suzanne, Huey Newton, Pam Parker, Rose-a-Lee, David Simpson, Gary Snyder, Ron Thelin, Rip Torn, Time Inc., Lew Welch, Thomas Weir, Gerard Winstanley, and Anonymous.

The contents herein are not copyrighted. Anyone may reprint anything without permission. Additional copies are available at the rate of 5 for $1. The Diggers have been given 40,000 copies to spread their word: free.

Many of those writers are no longer around but happily Paul Krassner is and he’s been writing regularly for The Huffington Post, the Arthur magazine weblog and other sites.

Via Boing Boing.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Ginsberg’s Howl and the view from the street
• Simplicissimus
• Revenant volumes: Bob Haberfield, New Worlds and others
• Underground history
• Wallace Burman and Semina
• Robert Anton Wilson, 1932–2007
• Barney Bubbles: artist and designer
• 100 Years of Magazine Covers
• Oz magazine, 1967-73

Ginsberg’s Howl and the view from the street

James Campbell in The Guardian this weekend writes about the arrest fifty years ago of Lawrence Ferlinghetti for his publishing Allen Ginsberg’s paean to ecstatic drug use and gay sex, Howl and Other Poems. Ferlinghetti was arrested on charges of selling (or “peddling”, as these prissy turns of phrase always have it) literature likely to be harmful to minors, even though it’s hard to imagine there were gangs of schoolkids rushing into his City Lights bookstore to buy a volume of experimental poetry. The ensuing trial was the first in a series of cases in the late Fifties and early Sixties which finally established (in America, at least) that the law needed to try and keep its hands off literary works.

America since 1957 has managed to grow up on one level, with Howl now regarded as a classic work of 20th century poetry, and grow more infantile on the other, with And Tango Makes Three, a childrens’ book about gay penguins, being the most-challenged book of 2006 according to the America Library Association; you can still rely on the “g” word to get the would-be book-burners agitated. The growing gulf between perceptions of morality in the US versus those in Europe can be seen in the way that US librarians need to hold an annual Banned Books Week to draw attention to the ongoing war between prudery and licence while there’s no equivalent to this in the UK. Britons used to look enviously at America’s freedoms of speech but the atmosphere has relaxed considerably here over the past twenty years while in America it sometimes seems that the clock is running backwards. That said, Russ Kick pointed out several years ago how, even among freedom-loving librarians, some books are more defensible than others.

The City Lights bookstore is located at 261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, and by coincidence I’ve spent the past couple of days exploring that locale using Google’s remarkable Street View facility which is now a feature on their San Francisco map, together with those for New York, Miami, Las Vegas and Denver. Not all the streets in these cities have been photographed yet but it’s fascinating to not only see places you’ve already been to but then turn down a side street and see the places you missed. If you want to know what it’s like to drive across the Golden Gate Bridge then here’s your chance.

Continue reading “Ginsberg’s Howl and the view from the street”

The art of LSD

Not art inspired by LSD but drawings done whilst under its influence.

These 9 drawings were done by an artist under the influence of LSD—part of a test conducted by the US government during its dalliance with psychotomimetic drugs in the late 1950s. The artist was given a dose of LSD-25 and free access to an activity box full of crayons and pencils. His subject is the medico that jabbed him.

Then there’s the whole world of blotter art, like this fairly recent Penguin logo example. Lots more blotter designs here and here.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The trip goes on
• Albert Hofmann
• Hep cats

Love and Haight: 1967 again

Love and Haight: 1967 again
Another Summer of Love retrospective piece. Big feature, great stuff.