Synopsis
From advertising and fashion to music and film, the psychedelic aesthetic defined the look of the 1960s. And yet neither the true scope of psychedelic art nor its key practitioners have ever been the subject of a thorough overview. Electrical Banana is the first definitive examination of the international language of psychedelia, focusing on the most important practitioners in their respective fields. Compiling hundreds of unseen images plus exclusive interviews and essays, it revises and expands the common perception of psychedelic art, revealing it to be more innovative, compelling and revolutionary than is usually acknowledged. Electrical Banana documents the great virtuosos of psychedelic art: men and women whose work combines avant-garde design with highly sophisticated image-making. Launching a million Day-glo dreams, the artists include: Marijke Koger, the Dutch artist responsible for dressing the Beatles; Mati Klarwein, who painted the cover for Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew; Keiichi Tanaami, the Japanese master of psychedelic posters; Heinz Edelmann, the German illustrator and designer of the Beatles’ animated film Yellow Submarine; Tadanori Yokoo, whose prints, books and fabrics defined the 1960s in Japan; Dudley Edwards, a painter, car decorator and graphic artist on the London rock scene; and the enigmatic Australian Martin Sharp, whose work for Cream and underground magazines made him a hippie household name in Europe. Electrical Banana features a lengthy historical essay and interviews with all of the artists.
Review
This overview of seven artists - a compilation of images, essays, and interviews - aims to revise and expand common perceptions of the 1960s psychedelic aesthetic. (Jan Stuart The New York Times Book Review)
This amazing mind blowing art book really captures these fabulous graphic European artists from the 1960's. (Bruce Alexander New York Waste)
As Electrical Banana: Masters of Psychedelic Art, by Norman Hathaway and Dan Nadel, shows, Edelmann’s story isn’t the only exception to some of the generally held rules of sixties psychedelic art. Another is that there were no great women artists of the period. How, then, to explain Marijke Koger, member of the design collective the Fool (which created, for instance, the costumes for the Magical Mystery Tour film), painter (her murals for the Aquarius Theater provided the backdrop for the famed LA run of Hair), set designer (on the 1968 film Wonderwall), and onetime musician (she’s credited as the tambourinist during the Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love” telecast). A modern women, she did it all.
The language of psychedelia existed beyond the borders of the Western world, too. Two of the seven artists profiled in the book are Japanese. Keiichi Tanaami’s illustrations, record sleeves, and posters are inflected with elements of ukiyo and manga, Pop art and underground comics; they’re also significantly informed by his memories of World War II. “Toyko was on fire,” he recalls. “It was very psychedelic for me.” (Nicole Rudick The Paris Review Daily)
...in “Electrical Banana: Masters of Psychedelic Art”, a book of previously unpublished photos, as well as essays and interviews, Ms. Koger and other artists who defined the look of the ’60s get their due. (Erica M. Blumenthal The New York Times)
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