Summer of Love at The Schirn in Frankfurt

Saturday, 24 June 2006 11:49

Frankfurt, Germany -“Summer of Love” is a ground-breaking exhibition about psychedelic art which illustrates the unique connections between contemporary art, popular culture, and political protest during the 1960s and early 1970s.  The presentation reveals that psychedelia constitutes one of the most exciting but also one of the most neglected phenomena in the history of the 20th century.  The dialogue between psychedelic art and the political revolution and counterculture of the time manifested itself in an extraordinary aesthetic that gave expression to the social, political, ethnical, and sexual liberation.

Psychedelic art has traditionally been relegated to the realm of applied art and bad taste, always obscured by the historically and institutionally sanctioned art of the era, the center of which was occupied by Pop, Minimal and Conceptual Art.  The psychedelic style was the result of a productive interaction between art, technology, drug culture, music, and many other influences that created an extraordinary aesthetics deeply steeped in the spirit of emancipation and freedom.  Most important was the expansion of the range of forms, colors, and media triggered by mind-expanding approaches and linked with a new perception of space.

Offering a wealth of 350 items from the fields of painting, sculpture, photography, film, video, environment, architecture, graphic design, and fashion, “Summer of Love” comprises works by Isaac Abrams, Richard Avedon, Lynda Benglis, Bernard Cohen, Richard Hamilton, Robert Indiana, Yayoi Kusama, Richard Lindner, and John McCracken.  One of the major environments of the show is Mati Klarwein’s “New Aleph Sanctuary” (1963–1971), which brings together many of his motifs.

The medium of film is integrated into the exhibition through large-scale projections of works by Lawrence Jordan, Stan VanDerBeek, Andy Warhol, James Whitney, Jud Yalkut, and Nam June Paik.