From femme fatale to love goddess: Nineteenth-century images of women in sixties San Francisco psychedelic rock posters

Psychedelic poster artists in 1960s San Francisco adapted images of women from 19th-century Symbolist, Art Nouveau, and Neoclassic art, finding new relevance in the visual rhetoric of dance-concert posters from 1966 to 1970. The essay traces this legacy in works by Wes Wilson, Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley, Victor Moscoso, Raphael (Bob) Schnepf, and Tom Wilkes, whose posters primarily targeted male hippiedom at the same moment second-wave feminism was emerging.

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Abstract

Abstract This essay sheds new light on the adoption and adaptation by Sixties San Francisco psychedelic poster artists of images of women from nineteenth‐century Symbolist, Art Nouveau, and Neoclassic sources. Nineteenth‐century stereotypes of women found new relevance when transformed into the visual rhetoric of west coast psychedelic dance‐concert posters from 1966 to 1970. The legacy of these nineteenth‐century images of women is traced in psychedelic posters designed by Wes Wilson, Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley, Victor Moscoso, Raphael (Bob) Schnepf, and Tom Wilkes who primarily targeted male hippiedom at the same moment when Sixties second‐wave feminism was beginning to emerge.