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. Striving for an ecstatic art stimulated the expansion of consciousness and the deliberate sensory overload. This was sometimes achieved with the help of hallucinogenic agents that were an essential element of the psychedelic movement. The presentation of more than 350 works including paintings, photographs, films, light shows, environments, and record covers, as well as documentary material from Europe, the USA, South America, and Japan presented within a sensational exhibition architecture designed by UN Studio (Ben van Berkel, Caroline Bos) emphasizes the international character of the movement.

The exhibition “Summer of Love” is sponsored by “Škoda Auto Deutschland GmbH” and “Galeria Kaufhof, Frankfurt, An der Hauptwache.” Additional support was provided by “koziol »ideas for friends gmbh“.

Christoph Grunenberg, curator of the exhibition and Director of Tate Liverpool: “At a time when the stylistic and formal elements of the art, design, and music of the 1960s and 1970s are again being liberally exploited, it is important to move beyond a purely nostalgic reception and attempt to grasp the original creative and visionary potential of the period. A great many discoveries remain to be made which will help us to understand and appreciate not only the true revolutionary nature of the art and politics of the period but also how they continue to shape what we think and how we act today.”

Max Hollein, Director of the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt: “The Schirn has repeatedly regarded it as its responsibility to highlight artistic and social developments. There have been few movements in the 20th century where art and everyday culture intertwined in such a symbiotic fashion. It is one of the central issues explored by ‘Summer of Love’ how an art that so deliberately evaded the conventional institutional contexts can, from some distance in time, be transferred there.”

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. Another crucial achievement of the movement was the fusion of quite different artistic techniques which culminated in a new hybrid art form variously labeled “intermedia,” “multimedia” or “mixed media” art. It was this fusion which made those multisensory spectacles possible for which the sixties became famous. In addition, contemporary visual artists began experimenting with light shows or ventured into music, film, fashion, design, or architecture establishing a close affinity with the ephemeral yet highly compelling manifestations of the fast-moving popular and commercial culture.

Psychedelic aesthetics and politics, however, made their mark not only in popular culture but also had an impact on major artists and avant-garde movements of the period. In 1966, on different sides of the Atlantic, artists pioneered the use of slide and film projections at live concerts; Andy Warhol at the New York discotheque Dom and Mark Boyle and Joan Hills at the legendary UFO Club in London. And the emergence of performance as a major art form coincided with psychedelia’s playful events in which the human body was exploited as an integral and expandable perceptual instrument, stimulated to reach a state of ecstatic frenzy or apathetic inward contemplation.

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 (which he also used in his designs for Santana album covers) in a spectacular installation. Vernon Panton’s amorphous walk-in furniture landscapes unfold Utopian visions of liberated and relaxed living. Works by Archigram, Hans Hollein, Haus-Rucker-Co and others convey an impression of what visionary architecture is about.

A special emphasis of the presentation is placed on environments as well as film, video and multimedia installations replicating the total experience of psychedelic light shows and music performances. Andy Warhol employed light shows and film and slide projections for the “Exploding Plastic Inevitable” and “The Velvet Underground.” Major film installations include a room with multiple projections of Mark Boyle and Joan Hills’ films, first used in light shows for the psychedelic band “The Soft Machine” and a liquid crystal projection by Gustav Metzger. 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. The documentary sections of “Mapping the Underground” dedicated to the psychedelic scenes in New York City, San Francisco, London, and Frankfurt outline the historical background and portray the movement’s protagonists such as the author Allen Ginsberg, the LSD guru Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey, who dedicated himself to the popularization of psychedelic drugs with his Merry Pranksters.