Week 5: Rick Griffin

This week I read Steve Barilotti’s article “A Beautiful Pandemonium” about artist and surfer Rick Griffin.  Griffin was an important figure for surf music and art.  He managed to create the perfect blend of rock, art and surfing.  He started out as an artist, a cartoonist for the magazine Surfer.  He was the creator of the Murphy cartoons, a two page cartoon in the Surfer which ran from 1961-1963.  Because of these cartoons Griffin was fairly popular within the surf world.  A few years later, upon hearing that his girlfriend was pregnant, Griffin went to the Acid Test.  This was a dance rite where people could enjoy their LSD experience and meet new people.  A group who would also frequent there was The Grateful Dead, which ultimately lead Griffin to meet Jerry Garcia.  Griffin was now an acid convert and turned his main attention to the surf world.  By putting pot references in his comics we started a connection between the drug world and the surf world in a very public way.  This was unlike any surfer at the time.  Many surfers credit Griffin for portrayed the feeling of riding the wave into a visual object.  His has become very well known in the surf world and helped start the Psychedelic Revolution which would head up the 1970s.

This article was very interesting to me because I don’t usually associate psychedelic art with surf culture.  I don’t know that much about the Grateful Dead and their music but I do recognize their artwork and posters.  This is because Rick Griffin made the connect between these worlds, the surf world, the art world and the rock world.  Surf culture doesn’t just revolve around surfing.  Music and art is a major part of their culture.  The idea of manifesting a visual component to the feeling these surfers experience is a large part of bringing this sport to life.  To surfers surfing isn’t just a hobby, it is a way of life.  So it only makes sense that the music and art they surround themselves with correspond.  They live and breathe surf, therefore other aspects of life must represent surfing as well.  Drugs aside, this kind of artwork does just that.