“The Hippie Ethos,” New Exhibition open through July 15, 2023 at Bahr Gallery
Exhibition of vintage 1960s rock concert posters expressing the hippie lifestyle and culture.
OYSTER BAY, N.Y. (March 29, 2023) – The Bahr Gallery, an art gallery dedicated to vintage, first-edition, psychedelic rock poster art, announced that a new Exhibition, “The Hippie Ethos” will be opening at the gallery on April 14, 2023 and running through July 16.
For a while, maybe 1966 to mid-1968, a successful utopian experiment captured the imagination of much of the youth of America. Drawing on utopian traditions which date back centuries and fueled by the euphoric and psychoactive powers of marijuana and LSD, the sixties such as we remember them (or not…) hosted a creative explosion in the arts, music and fashion, combined with a belief that the world could be born anew. Characterized by the vivid, flowing colors of psychedelic art and music, and a belief that love was the solution to all problems, hippie culture set out to transform the world by rejecting every social, political, economic and aesthetic feature of mainstream Western society.
Curator and Gallery owner Ted Bahr explained, “The hippie ethos, or lifestyle, was a total rejection of their parent’s generation – its ideals, social norms, prejudices, clothing, music, film and more. It was a turnabout that exploded onto the national consciousness in a mere handful of years. From the first hints of psychedelic music, civil rights protests, women’s liberation and longer hair in 1965, by August 1969 it was Woodstock Nation.”
This Exhibition at the Bahr Gallery shines a light on some of the posters that expressed the visual universe of that hippie generation, from wild new clothing, posters-to-get-stoned-to, embrace of Native-American culture, Eastern religions, and back-to-nature themes, to freeform dancing, unabashed nudity, protest against the war, headshop posters, health food stores, and other themes that boldly stated, “Here we are America, Your Sons and Daughters.” Not to mention the music…
Bahr continued, “Posters were not incidental to the hippie experience – in fact they were a central part of it. Hippies and sixties youth embraced the poster as inexpensive disposable art that could express the way they felt and later be torn down and replaced with other posters. They didn’t need bulky frames like the art of their parent’s generation and indeed posters were often plastered back-to-back and climbed up the walls and across the ceiling! Often, the clash of generations ended up with some exasperated version of, “we don’t care what you do, as long as it all stays in your ROOM!”
Few of the posters survive today, some 55 years later. The Bahr Gallery Exhibition will include works by prominent late 1960s poster artists including Wes Wilson, Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley, Jacqui Morgan, Milton Glaser, Bonnie MacLean, Joe Roberts Jr., Robert Fried, Alan “Gut” Terk, Tom Weller, Bob Schnepf, Rick Griffin and Wilfried Satty.
Admission to the Exhibition is free. The Bahr Gallery, located at 95 Audrey Avenue in Oyster Bay,will reopen April 15 and hours will be Thursday, Friday, and Saturday from 1:30-5:30pm and by appointment.