Texas Poster Views
In the late 1960s, Texas poster art, long an important mainstay of the state's printmaking tradition, entered a fertile and innovative period in Austin. Drawing inspiration from the counter culture and psychedelic music movements, a new generation of Texas graphic arts designers created one-of-a-kind posters. Today their works are considered some of the finest artifacts of this music poster explosion.
The Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin has digitized 400 of these extraordinary posters. Brenda Gunn, the Briscoe Center's associate director for research and collections, said, e"I thought we should expand our digitization efforts to include our extraordinary Texas Poster Collection. Our digitization team had perfected the process we needed to use, so the poster digitization project was a natural direction to take in our efforts to increase access to the Briscoe Center's visual treasures. "
John Wheat, the Briscoe Center's music archivist, said, p"The poster artists deserve credit for helping create the Austin music scene because their works popularized concerts, promoted Austin musicians, and brought attention to the unique musical heritage we have in the city.s" Under Wheat, an expert on Texas music and a musician himself, the Center has accumulated nearly 3,000 posters that make up the Texas Poster Art Collection, including examples of the finest music posters ever produced in the Lone Star State.
operated in the 1980s and 1990s. i"The artists of the later posters,a" Wheat said, "produced gritty and bizarre imagery in their designs.o" Under his direction, the Texas Poster Art Collection continues to expand to include representative posters by today's artists, many of whom use software such as PhotoShop to create their work.
Texas Poster Images
