Paul Butterfield Bernarr MacFadden

NOTE:  We also have a FIRST PRINTING available!

The central image of this poster is a photograph of Bernarr McFadden, a health food and fasting advocate from the 1920s. Bernarr MacFadden (1868 -1955) was also an influential American proponent of physical culture, a combination of bodybuilding with nutritional and health theories. He founded the long-running magazine publishing company MacFadden Publications. MacFadden is credited with beginning the culture of health and fitness in the United States and serving as mentor to Charles Atlas and Jack LaLanne. His life is way too interesting and bizarre to chronicle further here – google him yourself.

This is one of the most attractive of the early posters by Wes Wilson – March 1966. One is struck by the resemblance to Beat Generation icon Neal Cassady and the image here is clearly meant to suggest someone dancing ecstatically under the influence of LSD. In fact, the dance rock concert descended from the Acid “tests” in late 1965 and early 1966, freeform multimedia events where anything went.