Good Vibrations

An Analysis of Victor Moscoso’s Neon Rose Poster Art

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Neon Rose #7, Victor Moscoso

A lot can be said about the era that was the 60s. It was a diverse mixture of political activity, drug culture and music from iconic groups like The Doors, The Grateful Dead, The Who, and so on and so forth. With a period as rich in historical content as it is in the music, it’s no surprise that the poster culture would be heavily influenced with the activities of this hippie-induced decade. The city that was really grooving to its own beat during this time? San Francisco. Particularly, the Haight-Ashbury section. This west-coast hub unapologetically flourished during pinnacle moments of this decade (take the Summer of Love, for example). Concerts, colorfully painted homes, and LSD fueled this city towards its iconic hippie-derived success in the 1960s. Poster artist phenomenon, Victor Moscoso, is no exception or stranger to this booming psychedelic era of San Francisco.

With the start of his own company, Neon Rose, Moscoso quickly became identifiable as one of the “Big Five” poster artists in San Francisco during this time period. Through his experimental and widely successful poster design, Moscoso’s work for Neon Rose famously embodied the drug and music culture that created this psychedelic hub of San Francisco in the mid 60s.

In the Eyes of the Beholder

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Neon Rose #1, Victor Moscoso

The primary purpose for the Neon Rose poster artwork was to advertise music shows and events happening at The Matrix, a nightclub that remains open today. The Matrix showcased a plethora of high profiled bands and was an iconic night time hangout. Moscoso’s posters were considered the major form of advertisement for events hosted at The Matrix over this time period of the mid to late 1960s.

The illicit drug and music culture surrounding Moscoso in San Francisco soon became a prominent source of stylistic influence within his Neon Rose poster art. Moscoso sought out design that replicated these vivid experiences – from acid rock music and psychedelic drugs – during this culturally impactive time period. He accomplished this through mode modifications that allowed a purposeful redirection to induce the same effect as drug use and rock music for the eyes of his audience, rather than their ears or minds. This visual effect remained in line with the artistic preferences of the people in this feel-good culture.

In other words, Moscoso created posters, that were intended to advertise various music events, using design strategies that specifically evoked the physical feeling of a psychedelic drug intoxication. This effect was intentionally utilized in order to advertise to this specific group of people – the very kind that were chasing after the music events the poster advertised.

The posters were designed to be difficult to immediately understand and would take time to be deciphered, due to their near illegibility. Moscoso’s goal with these strategies was to get and hold the attention of the right kind of person, in order to help gather and attract the right kind of crowd to these various shows hosted at The Matrix.

Essentially, if you didn’t look twice at them as you walked down the street, you probably wouldn’t enjoy the experience they advertised anyway.

Anti-Art School

It was Moscoso’s rejection of everything taught in Art and Design School that helped fuel the success of his creations. Moscoso, although formally trained at Cooper Union, Yale University, and San Francisco Art Institute, decided to ignore the knowledge he had gathered about the importance of legibility and the essence of color theory that Josef Albers had established. This decision to reject these concepts was very unusual and incredibly innovative at the time. It also remains a design effect of psychedelic themed art that is now studied in Graphic Design and Art History due to the advertising success it can entail when it is appropriately utilized.

Groovy Typography

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Neon Rose #12, Victor Moscoso

Moscoso’s Neon Rose posters all consisted of hand drawn, voluminous typography that oozed this hippie-vibe of the 60s.

Perhaps one of the most iconic Neon Rose posters is Neon Rose #12. This particular poster, advertising a show put on by The Chambers Brothers, showcases curved typography that is heavily influenced by the lettering during the Vienna Secession. The curvilinear typography, placed within sunglass panes, is colorized in bright blue and radiates against magenta hues, helping to allude to the drug culture of this time period.

This hand-drawn typography exudes a fluid texture and psychedelic vibe as it appears to be moving within the panes. Due to this effect, the typography, particularly in the right panel of the glasses, is nearly illegible and calls for the viewer’s time and patience to decipher the details of the event.

High Contrast

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Neon Rose #2, Victor Moscoso

The coloration within the Neon Rose posters that Moscoso created are excessively high in contrast, to the point that the color pairings seem to vibrate against each other because they are so completely opposite, while remaining equals in intensity and vibrancy of hue.

Take Neon Rose #2 (pictured above). The intensity of the blue, orange and magenta bounce and radiate off of each other, giving a glittering, radiating vibe around the pin-up nude female figure centered below the typography. The effect communicates a vibe that the female figure is actually moving when, in reality, she isn’t. This effect of vibrating colors occurs when a viewer’s mind can’t separate or determine the figure from the ground and vice versa. This figure-ground confusion is occurring because the colors are opposites on the color wheel, but at equal level when it comes to intensity and brightness. This causes a continuous reversal of figure and ground in a viewer’s mind, causing a continuous vibrating, moving effect. In Neon Rose #2, the illicit coloration effect helps communicate the uninhibited atmosphere that was San Francisco in the 60s.

Peace & Love

Moscoso’s defiant rejection of the traditional artistic viewpoint arguably lead to the success behind his Neon Rose poster art. His challenge helped prove that questioning one’s restrictions opens up great possibility for success. Moscoso’s vibrating color choices and illegible typography enable a platform that, not only stands for San Francisco’s cultural significance at the time, but also inspires generations of artists to think outside of the box by questioning what is held as the standard.

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Works Cited

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