A Cel­e­bra­tion of the Artists Behind the Amer­i­can Rock Poster Movement

The Art of the Dead by Phil Cush­way show­cases the vibrant, charis­matic poster art that emerged from the streets of San Fran­cisco in 1964 and 1966. It traces the cul­tural, polit­i­cal, and his­tor­i­cal influ­ences of posters as art back to Japan­ese wood blocks through Bell Époque, on to the Beat­niks, the Free Speech Move­ment, and the Acid Tests. Fea­tur­ing inter­views and pro­files of the key artists, includ­ing Rick Grif­fin, Stan­ley “Mouse” Miller, Alton Kel­ley, Wes Wil­son, and Vic­tor Moscoso.

The book includes over 200 large and small repro­duc­tions of pieces relat­ing to the Grate­ful Dead and offers a trip through time with a focus on the artists and the devel­op­ment of the rock poster as a mod­ern art form.

The cover of the book was adapted from a 1995 Grate­ful Dead Mardi Gras poster by Troy Alders.

It was just announced that there is a spe­cial Art of the Dead lim­ited edi­tion art print box set by Stan­ley Mouse, a key archi­tect of this legacy. Five 11″ x 17″ pre­vi­ously unpub­lished archival giclee prints were pro­duced in San Fran­cisco under Stanley’s super­vi­sion directly from his orig­i­nal oil paint­ings and incor­po­rated into an edi­tion of 225.

Read more about the Art of the Dead and the Lim­ited Edi­tion prints at artofthedead.com