Wes Wilson was born Robert Wesley Wilson in Sacramento, California, on the 15th of July, 1937. He grew up in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California, graduating from high school in the smallish California town of Auburn in 1955. He went on to Sierra College, Sacramento City College, and then to San Francisco State College. He didn't study art in college; rather, his love of ideas, discourse and dialogue steered him into philosophy with a psychology minor. After dropping out of college in the spring of 1962, and his misfortune at having his first marriage end in divorce, he decided to seriously pursue his perennial fascination with art.
Wes entered the printing trade in San Francisco as a lithographer and in 1964, or possibly early 1965 (he can't remember exactly when), he took two night classes at the San Francisco Academy of Art. One course had to do with figure drawing (taught by well known illustrator Howard Brodie) and the other was on oil painting technique. Aside from these two short studies, his most significant art learning experiences came from his previous acquaintance with several other San Francisco artists, poets, coffee shop philosophers and their stimulating company. He was particularly influenced and inspired artistically by one obscure San Francisco artist, Rick Barton, who created fine art prints from wood and linoleum cuts in the early sixties. Rick inspired Wes' graphic style considerably as evidenced by the heavy linear elements often seen in Wes' graphic work, very reminiscent of Rick's linoleum cut prints.
More important to his later poster work were Wes' practical experiences as a lithographer learning graphic art while involved as a working partner with Bob Carr in a small printing business in San Francisco, Contact Printing. These work-related experiences later spawned Wes' color and printing innovations which appeared later in his posters. Although he had done some avant garde graphic work while still in the printing business; his art career really began in earnest only after the business was sold in early 1966 when he became a full time freelance graphic artist and, of necessity, a printing broker as well. Even though Wes 'did everything' including the actual printing and delivery for several of his first posters; it was as a freelance artist and printing broker that his commissions -- with Chet Helms (of the Family Dog organization) and then by the late Bill Graham -- that the majority of his innovative poster work was done. It was then through his efforts that the now infamous psychedelic poster first came into being.
The psychedelic poster can be described as often having difficult to read lettering ("36 pt. illegible" wrote Warren Hinkle III, of RAMPARTS Magazine), colors which contrasted sometimes severely, images which are sometimes quite abstract, very personal, occasionally segmented, but which in the aggregate is curiously fascinating to so many people of all ages and cultural backgrounds.
During this rather short period, Wes designed more than seventy-five posters for dance concerts, poetry broadsides, political and dramatic events in and around the San Francisco Bay Area. The uniqueness of his poster art gained him much attention with the local, national and international media. As its originator, Wes was later to become known as the 'godfather' of the psychedelic poster.
Despite the fact that Wes had so little formal training in art (two night classes), his innovations were so dynamic and amazing that they inspired many highly trained professional artists, including Yale graduate Victor Moscoso, Rick Griffin, Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley, Peter Max (see Note 1) and Fullbright scholar Robert Fried who were struck by his awesome originality and derived significant inspiration from Wes' work, applying his discoveries in various ways to their own work.
Articles about Wes and other psychedelic poster artists appeared not only in the Bay Area newspapers, but in national and international magazines such as ART FORUM, CA, ART INTERNATIONAL, INDUSTRIAL DESIGN, DER SPEIGEL (Germany) and GRAPHIS to name a few. NEWSWEEK, LOOK, TIME and LIFE also devoted extensive space to describing this new poster art phenomena during the sixties.
It was after visiting Wes one evening at his Mill Valley home with friends Nico, Ultraviolet, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground in 1967 and seeing that Wes' modest studio consisted simply of a table and a chair in an otherwise empty room amidst cluttered stacks of posters, that Andy Warhol made his well known statement about how everyone can become "famous for (or was it 'in'?) fifteen minutes". In 1968, Wes was honered by the National Endowment For The Arts by being selected for a special $5,000 award due to his "contribution to American art".
Psychedelic posters were so successful that Bill Graham and Chet Helms often made many times more profit from the subsequent sale of these and related posters than from the events they were originally made to advertise. Later, in 1979, Bill would say "This may sound funny, but I've never been a good businessman (if I was) I'd be 20 times as wealthy as I am....I could have made millions off the Fillmore posters" (quoted from BAM Magazine 11/15/91). Making millions selling posters was a benefit accorded only to Peter Max and his subsequent marketing of sixties theme posters (which helped propel him into later achieving gross sales of over 1.5 billion dollars. Congratulations Peter!)
Additionally, the creation of these and related posters generated millions of dollars worth of business for printers and print retailers throughout this country. Their often stunning originality, upsetting accepted graphic design standards and launching a new trend in the advertising industry as well as stunning the 'fine' arts world. It's safe to say that these artistic innovations, which Wes played such an important role in creating, are here to stay and will remain a viable part of the poster arts world for generations to come.
Wes' posters were not simply commercially successful creations which helped make money for rock and roll promoters and inspire countless other artists, they also appealed to the aesthetic sensibilities of many fine arts museums as well. His posters and art have appeared in exhibition in many locations throughout the world, including these:
7/1966 "Wes Wilson Posters" Seven Arts Center Francaise-SF, CA
11/1966 "Rock & Roll Posters" S.F. Art Institute-SF, CA
1/1967 "Wes Wilson Posters" Kelley Galleries-SF, CA
7/1967 "The Joint Show" Moore Galleries-SF, CA
8/1967 "Rock Posters" S.F. Museum Of Modern Art-SF, CA
10/1967 "Psychedelic Posters" U.C. Art Museum-Berkeley, CA
1/1968 "Word and Image" Museum of Modern Art-NYC, NY
4/1968 "S.F. Rock Posters" Traveling Exhibit-USIS/Europe, Brest (Musee de Brest) - France, Darmstadt (Hessisches Landesmuseum) - Germany, Hamburg (Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe) - Germany, Lyon (Musee de Beaux-Arts) - France, Paris (American Student and Artist Center) - France
3/1973 "WW Posters and Watercolors" Thackeray & Robertson-SF, CA. "Images Of An Era The American Poster 1945-75" Sponsered by Mobil Oil Corporation - An Exhibition Organized By The National Collection Of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution - Circulated Throughout The United Stated And Abroad
3/1987 "SF Rock Poster Art" S.F. Museum of Modern Art-SF, CA
3/1987 "Wes Wilson" Psychedelic Solution-NYC, NY
12/1989 "Looking Back-Rock Posters of the Sixties By Wes Wilson", Springfield Art Museum-Springfield, Missouri
His poster work is now in the print and poster collections of most major art museums throughout the world such as: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Museum of Modern Art in New York City; The Legion of Honor - The Auchenbach Foundation for the Graphic Arts in San Francisco; The Oakland Museum in Oakland, California; The Print Collection of the Louvré in France; The Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia and a number of others.
Currently, Wes is the president of a poster publishing company called "The POSTER Project Ltd." and is the editor of its unique and colorful newsletter OFFtheWALL, available for $25 per year (four issues) from 1602 'D' S. Elliott Ave., Aurora, MO 65605. Its circulation continues to increase steadily. He also paints and continues to design innovative event posters. His recent graphic work reflects his love and respect for innovation of graphics computer wizard Steve Jobs and his Macintosh computer.
Wes, the father of six children and twice a grandfather, lives quite modestly on his "almost paid for" 135 acre ranch (Living Water Ranch). He loves the country life, his pickup truck, the sharing of ideas, home and family, his blue heelers and cozy cats, his arty friends, his garden, green meadows, clear creeks, hardwood forest, nearby Ozark lakes and rivers and of course his wife (now a Doctor of Psychology) of many years, Eva.
November/ 1993
©1993 Wes Wilson - All Rights Reserved
Note 1: Although Wes had never met Peter Max; clearly visible behind the potted palm in the left rear of the full page photo of Peter in his studio for the LIFE Magazine 1967 article about the poster 'craze', is Wes' Muddy Waters Fillmore poster.
