Fluxfest

This poster introduces a particularly "West Coast" invocation of Fluxus into the collection. The event advertised aligns Fluxus with the avant-garde performance group the San Francisco Mime Troupe (who, it should be noted, do not perform pantomime but instead consider themselves 'mimics', satirists of contemporary life and its absurdities) and San Francisco acid-rock band Quicksilver Messenger Service. While poster's hybrid visual style of psychedelia-influenced art nouveau would likely have been anathema to George Maciunas's rigorously monochromatic, absurdist functionalism, it testifies both to the flexibility of the "Fluxus" moniker and to the fact that during the 1960s a range of experimental practices coexisted within the larger formation of "counterculture". The graphics are the work of Ida Griffin, wife of the famous psychedelic artist Rick Griffin. The poster was printed at Berkeley-Bonaparte, the distribution agency Griffin founded in 1967 with Alton Kelley, Stanley Mouse, Victor Moscoso and Wes Wilson, all important psychedelic artists.