{"id":803665,"date":"2020-01-30T19:34:55","date_gmt":"2020-01-31T02:34:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=945946"},"modified":"2020-01-30T19:34:55","modified_gmt":"2020-01-31T02:34:55","slug":"wes-wilson-iconic-psychedelic-poster-artist-dead-at-82","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/wes-wilson-iconic-psychedelic-poster-artist-dead-at-82\/","title":{"rendered":"Wes Wilson, Iconic Psychedelic Poster Artist, Dead at 82"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Wes Wilson, the influential poster artist whose work adorned concert prints by some of the 1960s\u2019 most popular rock bands, died January 24th at the age of 82, the New York Times<\/em><\/a> reports. His son, Jason, confirmed that Wilson died at his Leanne, Missouri home, though the cause of death was not announced.<\/p>\n

Based in San Francisco, Wilson\u2019s work stood out and helped define the style that is associated with posters from the Sixties era \u2014 utilizing bold colors, unique images and swirling typography that looked to be melting and could be difficult to read. That was its intent, meant to pull people\u2019s attention in to what was being advertised. He designed posters for a number of artists who ruled the era, including the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Van Morrison and the Byrds alongside many others.<\/p>\n

His work was commissioned by Bill Graham, who booked rock concerts at San Francisco\u2019s Fillmore Auditorium and Chet Helms who produced concerts at nearby Avalon Ballroom.<\/p>\n

Born Robert Wesley Wilson on July 15th, 1937 in Sacramento, California, Wilson moved to San Francisco after serving in the Army National Guard. He partnered with Bob Carr, who owned a small printing shop, and began creating layouts and designs. Graham and Helms were clients of their enterprise.<\/p>\n

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Wilson\u2019s work was influential to San Francisco artists Victor Moscoso, Rick Griffin, Stanley \u201cMouse\u201d Miller and Alton Kelly, collectively recognized as the Big Five of the genre. In the Seventies, Wilson moved to Missouri, where he raised cattle and expanded his craft into working in enameled glass and watercolor painting.<\/p>\n

In a 2016 interview commemorating the 50th anniversary of Wilson creating the font that inspired many poster artists to come, Wilson spoke to NPR<\/a> about what influenced his work.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what inspired my art was a little bit of both music and the times, and basically, I wanted to do a poster that people liked to look at. And I wanted to use up all the space,\u201d he explained. \u201cOnce the color came into being then I was very inspired to try to put together colors that were really exciting \u2014 and the idea of using colors, complimentary colors right next to each other. And so it was kind of the combination of a whole bunch of things, and all based on this idealism of \u2018things are going to get better.’\u201d<\/p>\n

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Popular on Rolling Stone <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wes Wilson, the influential poster artist whose work adorned concert prints by some of the 1960s\u2019 most popular rock bands, died January 24th at the age of 82, the New York Times reports. His son, Jason, confirmed that Wilson died at his Leanne, Missouri home, though the cause of death was not announced. Based in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-803665","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-24 03:38:03","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803665\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}