Heart & Torch - Rick Griffin's Transcendence
by Laguna Art Museum, Doug Harvey
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Book Summary Information
Author: Doug Harvey, Laguna Art MuseumEditor: Susan Anderson
Illustrator: Rick Griffin
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-07-21
ISBN: 158423279X
Number of pages: 156
Publisher: Gingko Press Inc.
Book Reviews of Heart & Torch - Rick Griffin's Transcendence
Book Review: Heart and Eyeball
Summary: 5 Stars
I just got this at a comics shop. I already have Gordon McClellan's Rick Griffin book (republished by Last Gasp) Rick Griffin Is this one better? Yes and no. A lot of the art is the same: beautiful, full-color slick-page reproductions. Rick Griffin is 95 pages, about 11 X 8.5 inches. Heart and Torch is 155 pages, 13 X 9.5 inches. Each has some art not in the other, but each is a delight.
I also had Tales from the Tube, originally an insert in Surfer magazine, but reprinted as a comic book by Print Mint. The entire thing is dazzling, but the high point is a two page color spread called Murphy Mystical Eyes. Both books reprint it beautifully, but Heart and Torch stays open to the page you're on due to the art book style binding. His Arthurian cover painting for Craig Yoe's Rock of Ages comic, is also in both books.
Griffin's psychedelic art remains the best-known and most iconic of that decade. His Jimi Hendrix poster may be the high point of era poster art. He made his posters by hand, redoing the entire poster for each of the four color separations, an extremely laborious, hand-crafted process that produced the stunning creations shown here. But he also revolutionized lettering, from the famous masthead for Rolling Stone magazine, to his instantly recognized lettering for record album covers. Then there's his extensive Grateful Dead cover and poster art. Most people probably encountered him in Surfer magazine or his covers for Robert Crumb's Zap comix.
As ground-breaking as his art was, he probably fits the stereotype of the tortured artist, and certainly appears as a restless soul. He was viewed as the incarnation of the LSD and pot culture of counter-culture California, but these books are the only ones I know that do justice to his seventies art for Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa, which McClelland introduces in a chapter called "Saved!" This resulted in a series of eye-dropping album covers, and an ongoing project of paintings and drawings illustrating the Gospel of John, The Gospel of John Illustrated Tract The Gospel of John Gift Book now considered among the best of his mature work.
In Torch, Greg Escalante interviews Chuck Fromm, who commissioned the project art. "The Gospel, which means good news is not often seen as "good" or "news" Fromm says...(Rick) created modern icons or windows to heaven." From that project over 500,000 people saw Rick's art. Much of the other writing in Torch marks it as what it is, a program for an art exhibit. Nevertheless, some of the first sentences of Doug Harvey's essay leaped out at me. His writing seems to me to do what Griffin did visually; he nails Griffin as rebelling or breaking out of the current confines of any given media, culture, or environment. "Griffin was interested in comics, figuration, lettering, graphic and product design, illustration, and honest labor. All of which are low status-- if not taboo-- categories in academic circles." Shockingly, Harvey reveals this careful, hand-made poster art as a psychedelic revival of the arts and crafts movement, which in retrospect, provides a counter-cultural critique and antidote to the current mass-produced barrage of soulless art and animation, and the endless stampede to heat death.
Summary of Heart & Torch - Rick Griffin's Transcendence
Presented in a lush oversize format, this comprehensive, career-spanning catalog features work from an exhibition organized by Laguna Art Museum. Heart and Torch: Rick Griffin s Transcendence is the first book and major museum retrospective to focus exclusively on Griffin s life s work. A cult figure that set the iconographic terrain for three distinct west coast subcultures, Griffin has been hugely influential on contemporary visual culture. Rick Griffin's poster art for seminal psychedelic era rock concerts is the stuff of legend, simultaneously his illustration work for surf magazines and cartoons for underground comics have arguably had equal impact in their respective genres. Less well known, but equally compelling is the impressive body of work Griffin created as a born again Christian starting in the early 1970's up until his untimely death in 1991. This fascinating book includes in-depth essays by Doug Harvey and Greg Escalante a foreword by Bolton Colburn, an interview with Chuck Fromm and further writing about Griffin by Chaz Bojorquez, Gordon McClelland and Jacaeber Kastor.Artists, A-Z Books
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