An exhibition that’s well worth the trip

The Museum of Design in Zurich currently has an exhibition of art inspired by the drug LSD. Entitled "Can You Pass the Acid Test" it features posters designed in the 1960s by San Francisco-based artists.

The Museum of Design in Zurich currently has an exhibition of art inspired by the drug LSD. Entitled “Can You Pass the Acid Test” it features posters designed in the 1960s by San Francisco-based artists.

As the saying goes, if you can remember the 1960s, you can’t have been around at the time. In other words, the hippie movement was for many of its members a time of dope smoking and tripping on LSD to the sound of psychedelic music.

“Psychedelic” is defined as an adjective relating to drugs (especially LSD) that produce hallucinations and apparent expansion of consciousness. Alessia Contin, curator of the exhibition, said she organised it after reading a magazine article about San Francisco posters, and discovering that the museum had about 300 of them in its catalogue.

These included such collectors’ items as posters by the man regarded as the pioneer of this genre, Wes Wilson. Like many rock musicians of the time, the poster artists experimented with LSD, and the results were reflected in their work.

Contin, who was born in the late 1960s, said : “I am fascinated by that period and its music. Today we have techno and the techno fliers are inspired by the psychedelic posters.”

But as a movement, psychedelic art and music were, like some of their followers, short-lived. It was all over by the end of the 1960s.

The poster exhibition is at Zurich’s Museum of Design until May 12.