The Summer of the Summer of Love
Summer of Love nostalgia reached its apex this summer simply because of demographics. Baby boomers who were twenty-five years old in 1967, for example, are sixty-five now -- a perfectly appropriate vantage point from which to reflect upon the generation's hallmark sea change. The family friendly "Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era," which runs through September 16 at New York's Whitney Museum, frames a small yet significant, and very colorful, fraction of the art, music, film, lighting, and design that made late-sixties New York, San Francisco, and London such spectacular places to be before, during, and after the summer of '67.
The first thing you see as you step out of the elevator on the museum's third floor is a room pulsing with the sound of, say, Jimi Hendrix's "Third Stone From the Sun" and the undulating, immersive imagery of the Joshua Light Show. (And if you're fortunate enough to have light-show founder Joshua White himself as your personal docent, as I did, you'll learn just how much you really didn't know about an era you've always taken for granted.) The show includes Janis Joplin's groovily painted Porsche (outside); genius poster art by Victor Moscoso, Stanley Mouse, and Martin Sharp; iconic photographs of the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and various Fillmore festivities; paintings reflecting both pop art and psychedelia, including Hendrix's own Fire Demon; Verner Panton's undulating furniture installation, Phantasy Landscape Visiona II; and Yayoi Kusama's disorienting Infinity Mirrored Room Love Forever. Thanks to Josh, I spent a lot more time than I might have otherwise paying attention to Luccata, a quirky, slowly shifting light composition by Thomas Wilfred. And I'll be back for all the meticulously restored films I missed.
"Summer of Love" isn't particularly experiential, but it's a lot of fun, possibly because this stuff wasn't necessarily meant to have a frame around it in the first place. And if there's never another Summer of Love, it's nice to know the instruction manual's still available for a rebuild.