This fine art monograph/faux underground comic facsimile is a psychedelic trip through the hippie movement.
In 2017, Gary Panter created an art installation, Hippie Trip, inspired by his first visit to a head shop in 1968. It expanded his mind to the possibilities of psychedelic art and music, analog crafts and drug culture. Crashpad is an extension of that installation and a riff on underground comics creators such as Zap's R. Crumb, Victor Moscoso, Robert Williams, and other icons of that era. An art object itself, it will be reproduced as both a deluxe, oversized hardcover reproducing Panter's pages at full size on heavy art paper, as full-color facsimiles of the originals. In addition, Crashpad will be printed as an old-fashioned and stapled black-and-white (with color covers) underground comic book, on newsprint, approximately 6" x 9", inserted into a sleeve within the hardcover so it can be removed and enjoyed on its own.
About the Author
Gary Panter has lived in Brooklyn since 1985. A multimedia/fine artist, his pioneering, post-underground comix work helped define the alternative comics movement in venues such as Raw, and his aesthetic remains influential. He is a Cullman Study Center fellow and a recipient of a Daimler/Chrysler design award and a Pollock/Krasner Foundation grant. He also has three Emmys for his design work on the classic PeeWee’s Playhouse television series.
Praise For…
Panter's painstakingly detailed acid-trip vision offers art comics heads an immersive rabbit-hole experience and sneaky satire on a navel-gazing subculture. — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
In Panter's drawings, a line is not the shortest path between two points, but a slow, wavering one, a termite's crawl with endless detours and distractions... this line is the constant. It intensifies his viewers' gaze, forcing them to reexamine forms they thought they knew. — Art In America
Gary Panter, a prolific cartoonist who emerged in the eighties as the leading proponent of punk comics, has long been interested in blending mystical fantasy and literature to create wryly irreverent comics. — The New Yorker