Rick Griffin: influences, impacts and how drugs affected his artwork

Introduction

Art is a culture that has over the years grown into an appreciated recognition of talent and creativity. Most people who take part in the art use it for their fascinations, expressions, and even as a leisure activity. It engages visual, performing, and auditory works, with the aim of appreciating the emotional power and inner beauty. An example of art includes literature, music, film, theatre, dance, and craft. It offers a form of balance on basic human instincts, providing a sense of harmony and content. It is an important communication element, channeling out emotions and different moods. It can also be channeled into a form of entertainment and political drive. One of the people involved in this culture was Richard Griffin, an artist and one of the top designers of psychedelic posters, along with Alton Kelley, Victor Moscoso, Stanley Mouse, and Wes Wilson, in the 1960s. Psychedelic art is a visual display mostly inspired by hallucinations caused by the ingestion of drugs like LSD and psilocybin, well known for psychoactive activity. The main focus of this paper, however, would be on the life of and Rick Griffin, his influences, impacts and how drugs like LSD affected his artwork.

Early Life and Influences

¹ Richard Alden Griffin, commonly known as Rick Griffin, was an American artist born in June 1944, in California, United States. He is well known for his Psychedelic art and was a key contributor to a movement known as Underground Comix movement, though he regularly showcased his work on Zap Comix. ² He was born to an engineer and archeologist, his father, whom he would accompany to his place of work in his childhood. It was there that he was exposed to Native American and ghost town artifacts, which contributed to his artwork later on. ³ He took on surfing at the age of 14 and would train with Randy Nauert, his lifetime friend who he met in Alexander Flemming Jr. High, at the Torrance Beach. His artistic mindset began while he was attending Nathaniel Narbonne High School in Los Angeles. ⁴ It was there where he produced his first surfer drawings that were the pilot to his comic strip, “Murphy,” in 1961, with his character featuring as the cover art the next year. He attended Chouinard Art in 1964, and it was here where he met his wife and fellow artist, Ida Pfefferle. ⁵ It was at this juncture where he began his associations with the Jook Savages, which mainly comprised of artists and musicians.

His passion for psychedelic posters began when he and his wife went on a surfing trip to Mexico. It was here that he saw psychedelic rock posters, crafted by Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelly that prompted them to relocate to San Francisco. ⁶ The couple moved in late 1966, where they sought shelter in their van before settling in Elsie Street in Bernal Heights district. Soon enough, his art became a preference of many, having incorporated a unique blend of psychedelic influences with Native American culture, and the love for surf. His first showcase was for the Jook Savages, as they were marking one year of the Psychedelic shop based on Haight Street. ⁷ During the exhibition, organizers under Human Be-In, who were key participants in the growth of psychedelic art, took an interest in his work and asked him to design posters for an event they were to host in January 1967. Music promoter Chet Helms similarly took an interest in his work and requested him to design posters for dance concerts. An example of his works is illustrated in figures 1, 2, and 3, showing the Jook Savages artwork post , the Grateful Dead , and the Door respectively.

Style and Technique

⁸ In 1967, Griffin, and the pioneers of Psychedelic art; Griffin, Mouse, Kelley, Victor Moscoso, and Wes Wilson, collaborated and founded Berkeley Bonaparte, which produced and marketed psychedelic posters. Eventually, Griffin went back to his hometown and finally settled in Clemente. In 1070, Griffin became a born-again Christian and changed his lifestyle, including his style and content of his art. ⁹ An example of this change is his Sail on Sailor painting, done in 1973, for the Mustard Seed Faith band. He began producing album art and other paintings and drawings, especially those reflecting The Gospel of John , which was published by Maranatha, a Christian record label. ¹⁰ On August 15, 1991, Griffin was involved in a motorcycle accident involving his Harley-Davidson motorcycle and a van. He was thrown off when his motorcycle collided with the van after it made an unexpected left turn. Since he was not in proper headgear, he sustained major head injuries and died on August 18 ^th, 1991, at the age of 47. ¹¹ His work was an inspiration to many, including surrealistic artist Mark Wilkinson.

¹² The main stylistic features in Griffin’s Psychedelic style, as illustrated in the figures, included fantastical, surrealistic imagery, kaleidoscopic patterns, optical illusions, paisley, and fractal patterns, distorted or morphed shapes, vivid, bright, or contrasting colors, and intense detail. It also involved a lot of symbolism, imagery and spiritual motifs. ¹³ Additionally, Griffin would use intense lettering styles which were highly decorative, making their graphics illegible or difficult to read. His artwork was based on detailed drawings and calligraphy, dominated by imagery such as snakes, bloody, eyeballs, beetles, and skulls. He would define them as an aspect to portray shock value. He had an imaginative mind and would turn his fantasies into vivid geometric designs, not forgetting to add in a signature detail that would differentiate his work from others. ¹⁴ His art was unique, bringing out detail that would define a hybrid of the drug and surf culture that was dominant in the 60s, with unique sensitivity and essence that lives within his works even in the present. He started by using pen and ink, mostly for comics, as shown in Figure 1, then progressed to using acrylic paint on posters, cover designs, canvas, and on large paintings as shown in Figure 2 and Figure 3.

Griffin highly used lithographic printing, which he would use in adjusting his art and color checks before finalizing the print run. ¹⁵ This was mostly influenced by an Art Nouveau influence, which is an international style in architecture, art and applied art, popular between 1890 and 1910. He incorporated more than one feature in his art; different colors, drop shadows, and fonts, and even added decorations to the serifs, making it hard to decipher the lettering within the art. This attracted a large population including hippies from the counter-culture, and interactions with rock-stars, musicians, and writers who were his fan-base and main supporters.

Influence of LSD on Griffin’s Work

LSD, also known as acid, is a hallucinogen meant to alter thoughts, emotions, and cognition. ¹⁶ Users normally tend to hear or see things that are non-existent. In the 60s, LSD was legal and readily available. Due to this, it became a major influence on most psychedelic artists, including Griffin. Similarly, he used other drugs such as Psilocybin that would have the same effects as LSD on the artists. Most artists claimed that LSD helped boost their creativity and open up more in regard to their work as displayed by the figures showing his various artwork. Psychedelic art required uniqueness and an intense level of satirical weirdness that Griffin sought to explore. ¹⁷ As a result, the use of LSD amplified his school of thought that brought up creative and impressive art that has become inspirational to many to date. The playful color imagery depicted in most of Griffin’s work may be closely associated with the experiences given by psychedelic drugs. ¹⁸ This drug was noted to be a revolution in the art culture, even to Griffin. It grew popular among many, with most sub-cultures taking a key interest in the growing trend of psychedelic art.

¹⁹ The key towards Griffin’s LSD use was to tap into his inner school of thought and visualize what he could see, normal art would regard this as imperfections despite their unique communication technique that is hard to decode, hence engaging anyone that interacts with them. ²⁰ With the help of the drug, he aimed to transform any form of mass-produced utility, for example, walls, vans, windows, and even automobiles, into unique objects that would identify with groups familiar with the lettering. This included political cultures, social trends such as the hippie culture, the counter-culture, surfing, and others that may have existed within the sixties.

Conclusion

The Psychedelic Revolution indeed had its veteran avatar in Rick Griffin. He managed to integrate the West- Coast culture with ideas that cropped from an imaginative mind and scaled up the definition of art entirely. His belief in his work has steadily introduced a different feel of art, reflecting on the importance of basing art on emotion and communication rather than doing art in the normal way. To him, each design expressed a deeper meaning than what one may think, leaving an interactive session that brings more intrigue and popularity. As such, Griffin has inspired other artists in recent times to carry on with the culture such as Android Jones, Hakan Hisim, and Jake Amazon, among others, who despite the ban on LSD, have embraced the art through music, visual paintings and body art. This type of art, though highly undervalued, has proven that one needs not be tied to physical restraints of human senses. As such, it helps in realizing how senses are an actual representation of the real world, despite being a bit biased. It, therefore, means that anyone can accurately show the world in a way that transcends the limitation of human senses.

Appendix

Figure 1: Rick Griffin: Jook Savage Art Show , 1 ^st January 1967, Haight Street

Figure 2: Rick Griffin: Grateful Dead, 1966, The Avalon

Figure 3: Rick Griffin: The Doors , 1967, The Avalon

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