Yellow Alice Avalon Ballroom poster 1968

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David Warren and L. Kent Hollister, Youngbloods at the Avalon Ballroom, 28-30 June 1968. FD125.

During 1968 a poster was produced for a series of concerts held at the Avalon Ballroom, San Francisco, between 28-30 June and featuring rock bands the Youngbloods, Santana Blues Band and It's A Beautiful Day, supported by the Garden of Delights light show. This poster is reproduced above. The artwork was by David Warren and L. Kent Hollister, in what appears to be a one-off collaboration. It featured the image of a pensive young woman with a yellowish complexion, surrounded by an array of colourful flowers in yellow, blue and pink, all set against a red background. Purplish and blue text is also seen - with some difficulty - printed upon the image. The woman in question was the then 20 year old Alice Liddell (1852-1934), famous as the inspiration for Lewis Carroll's classic books of fantasy fiction Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871). The poster art was an adaptation of an 1872 photograph of Liddell by Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-79) (Cox & Ford 2003, Waggoner et al. 2010, Heilbrun & Waggoner 2011). That photograph is reproduced below.

 

Julia Margaret Cameron, Alice Liddell, albumen silver print from glass negative, 1872. Collection: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 

The Cameron photograph features the long-haired Alice Liddell dressed in a white dress with white lace and standing against, and within, a wall of bushy flowers. One hand is on her hip whilst the other holds a twig. She stares blankly out at the camera, as though deep in thought, her eyes still and her lips pursed. Two small flowers rest upon her hair. Liddell had many years experience in this role as model, having sat for Lewis Carrol from the age of six. During this early period in the development of photography, the process required a subject to  remain motionless for a lengthy period - often up to 10 seconds - as a result of the slow film exposure speeds then available. Cameron took a number of photographs of Liddell during 1872, staging her in a variety of classical poses. Within the image under discussion Alice is presented as Pomona, the Roman goddess of gardens and fruit trees (The Met 2013). The poster and photograph also bring to mind the opening shot of the Jonathan Miller 1966 BBC Television production of Alice in Wonderland, featuring the then unknown, 13 year old Anne-Marie Mallik (b.1952).

Therein the young, long-haired actress stands amongst bushes and stares blankly into the distance. Miller's production in black and white is the most dream-like of all to date, and perhaps the most true to Lewis Carroll's original vision. That Miller's film should commence with a seeming recreation of the Cameron photograph is recognition of its debt to the Pre-Raphaelite movement.

The Pre-Raphaelites

Both Julia Margaret Cameron and Lewis Carroll (aka. Charles Dodgson) were associated with the British Pre-Raphaelite group of young artists, graphic designers, writers and photographers who worked from the late 1840s through to the 1870s. This rebellious group rejected the constraints of the Academy and set out to create a vibrant, new art, abandoning the dark, dour colours and motifs of the prevailing British landscape, portrait and still life traditions for a lighter, heightened and more natural palette, alongside often mythological subject matter. Interest in the Pre-Raphaelites and later British artists such as Aubrey Beardsley grew during the 1960s as young people, musicians and artists were attracted to their innovative designs, brightly coloured paintings and related works in photography and literature, with an emphasis on the classics as subjects for art and writing. Affinities between works such as John Everett Millas's Ophelia and the Youngbloods poster can be seen, with both featuring a beautiful young woman amidst a verdant, highly detailed and brightly coloured surround of plants and flowers.

 John Everett Millais, Ophelia, oil on canvas, 1851-2. Collection: Tate Gallery, London.

The use of a similarly colourful, though also unorthodox palette was common among the San Francisco poster artists of the late 1960s, even going to the extent of incorporating fluorescent inks which glowed under stroboscopic and blue light. The unconventional bright yellow skin texture in the Youngbloods poster is a good example of this. In a similar vein, these young artists rejected the traditional gallery path and sought to express themselves through more publically accessible, community-based art in the form of rock concert posters and related paraphernalia such as postcards, t-shirts, album covers and illustrations for underground magazines and comics. As a result, few if any were acquired by art galleries and museums at the time as they were considered ephemeral items of pop culture and not in the realm of high art. Half a century later, this condescension has dissipated and the collectability of the posters as works of art and historical artifacts has come to be recognised.

Mellow Yellow

Why did the Youngbloods poster feature a yellow Alice? We can only guess at the answer, though there are precedents. Lewis Carroll's book Alice in Wonderland was popular among the drug culture of the Sixties, as its otherworldly characters and Alice's dream-like escapades resonated with those experiencing hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD (acid), hashish and marijuana. This became more common after 1965 as acid, for a brief period, was the drug of choice among educated youth of the West. Though there is no evidence that Lewis Carroll was a drug user a century before, he did suffer from hallucinations similar to those within the book, such as feelings of tallness and smallness, and this did, in some ways, reflect the hallucinogenic experience. The 1966 Jonathan Miller BBC television production of Alice in Wonderland was produced as LSD became readily available in England and reflects the trippy perspective of the original text. Yellow was also associated with the drug culture around this time. Evidence of this includes English musician Donovan's October 1966 hit song Mellow Yellow; the American artist Andy Warhol's March 1967 banana album cover for the Velvet Underground & Nico LP recording; and the contemporary rumour that dried banana skins had hallucinogenic properties arising from a fictional psychoactive substance called bananadine (Wikipedia 2019).

Grace Slick wrote her song White Rabbit - which was based on elements of Carroll's book - at the end of an acid trip during late 1965 or early 1966, precisely 100 years after the book's initial publication (Hughes 2019). When the song was recorded by her new band the Jefferson Airplane in November 1966 and released in June 1967 at the height of the so-called Summer of Love, it was an immediate cult classic and went on to become a world-wide hit. Out of that, interest in Carroll's work grew, as did that in other fantasy books such as J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. The Sixties saw a renaissance in Western art, literature and music, and works such as Alice in Wonderland were embraced as pointers to a new way of viewing a world torn apart by war and displays of barbarity and inhumanity. The Pre-Raphaelites were viewed anew as pioneers in this rebellion against the status quo and a domineering conservative agenda. Slick's song may also have been the inspiration for the poster design by Warren and Hollister based around the Cameron photograph. It was printed in San Francisco in the then standard size of 14 x 20 inches using the multicoloured offset photolithographic process. The concert was organised by Family Dog Productions, set up by Chet Helms in February 1966. Family Dog ran the Avalon Ballroom in competition with Bill Graham's Fillmore Auditorium. Their logo features at the top centre of the poster. Another Avalon Ballroom poster with an Alice in Wonderland theme was produced for concerts on 4-7 July 1968, the weekend following the Youngbloods concerts.

 

Dottie, Iron Buttlerfly at the Avalon Ballroom, poster, July 1968. FD126.

This poster features an image of Alice and a gryphon, surrounded by a collection of leaves and flowering buds. The central image is a reproduction of elements of an original engraving by John Tenniel from the 1865 publication. The poster advertises a concert featuring the bands Iron Butterfly, Indian Head Band and The Collectors, along with The Electroluminescense light show. The Family Dog logo is located at the bottom centre. This poster is similar to that produced for the Terry Gilliam 1977 film Jabberwocky, which also features an original Tenniel engraving of the mythological monster being confronted by a sword-wielding Alice, though this time coloured.

Terry Gilliam, Jabberwocky, move poster, 1977.

A small postcard of each of the Avalon Ballroom posters was produced at the time. These were used to promote the gigs to those on the Family Dog mailing list. In this instance the Youngbloods postcard was printed alongside the later Alice in Wonderland themed postcard advertising the Iron Butterfly concert. The twin postcard was 6 3/4 x 9 1/4 inches in size.

 Double-printed postcard of Iron Butterfly and The Youngbloods Avalon Ballroom posters, June - July 1968.

Carroll's book and the Slick song were extremely popular at the time, featuring in numerous rock music and other commercial posters sold in Head shops and record bars.

 Alice and the Caterpillar, psychedelic poster, 1967.

Alice in Wonderland would also appear on numerous movie posters from the earliest days of cinema, the most famous of which is the decidedly psychedelic version produced for the 1974 re-release of the Walt Disney 1951 production of the classic text.

 

Alice in Wonderland, Walt Disney Productions, poster, 1974.

This poster was in stark contrast to the original 1951 version and reflected the Sixties revitalization in, and reinterpretation of, Carroll's work, both as writer and photographer. Studies of his life and times inevitably brought to notice the association for a brief period with Alice Liddell and her family. The fame it brought both of them is mirrored in the aforementioned posters, with Yellow Alice perhaps the most poignant. Both the real Alice, and Carroll's book, continue to interest lovers of fantasy fiction and its origins in reality. Carroll's work offers much regard to both.

References

Cox, Julian, and Colin Ford. Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003. no. 347, p. 230.

Hughes, Robert, The story behind the song: White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane, Classic Rock, 5 March 2019. Available URL: https://www.loudersound.com.

Waggoner, Diane, Tim Barringer, Joanne Lukitsh, Britt Salvesen, and Jennifer L. Roberts. The Pre-Raphaelite Lens: British Photography and Painting, 1848–1875. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 2010. no. 99, p. 13, dust jacket.

Heilbrun, Françoise, and Diane Waggoner. Une Ballade d'Amour et de Mort: Photographie Preraphaelite en Grande-Bretagne, 1848–1875. Paris: Musée d'Orsay, 2011. p. 36.

The Met, Pomona, Julia Margaret Cameron photograph of Alice Liddell, The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2013. Available URL: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/270819.

 

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Alice in Wonderland: Alice in OZ | Australian books | Australian books (presentation) | Christian Yandell's Alice | Film | Photography | Poster 1968 | Poster 1977 | Whitcombe's Alice |

 

Last updated: 8 July 2023

Michael Organ, Australia