meethapani

Posters – Art for the people The posters I grew up with were the wonderful psychedelic pop art posters of the Sixties and Seventies. .  They were possibly the first posters made for youth. On July 16, 1966, impresario, Bill Graham went around San Francisco on his scooter pasting up Wes Wilson’s now famous “Flames” poster announcing a concert on July 23. It had orange flame shaped letters vibrating against a lime green background. The posters slowly disappeared from the walls as people started collecting them. Aaron Skirboll writes for the Smithsonian Magazine, what was an advertisement had become “a coveted work of art”. Postermania best describes what followed. Florescent colours, op art, pop art, all came together is a psychedelic explosion   that characterized art, design, and fashion of the time. Graham was instrumental in commissioning and marketing psychedelic concert posters by designers such as Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley, Wes Wilson, Victor Moscoso, and...

The Gypsy Soul The first time I realized that gypsies were not just characters in a film but real people was as a child when my father, an orthopaedic surgeon, told us of a gypsy patient he treated. Of Irani origin, he was told his leg was to be amputated and he came to my father to see if it could be saved. The reason caught our imagination: in gypsy law, if a man was disabled, another could take his wife, as it meant he could no longer take care of her. His wife was beautiful and his cousin, who accompanied him, was keen to benefit from his amputation and marry his wife. My father managed to save his leg and the gypsy gave him a blanket with a huge tiger printed on it.  The next time I met a gypsy was more recent: he was from England and had come to understand truck art so he could paint a truck in London. As we shared experiences, I discovered many words in Romany, the language gypsies spoke, were similar to Urdu.  Andre: inside; angustri: ring; bal: hair; baro/ba...