Kaleidoscope Eyes
Annie Blinkhorn, Tuesday, 28th October 2008
Whenever I was taken to the local library as a small child I would always take out the same picture book that was so densely illustrated I found something new each time I opened it. I hadn’t thought about this book for decades until I experienced something of a Proustian recollection earlier this week when I saw advertisements for the latest exhibition at the Design Museum, ‘The Man with Kaleidoscope Eyes’, a retrospective of illustrator and graphic designer Alan Aldridge.
The book of my childhood was Aldridge’s The Butterfly Ball and The Grasshopper’s Feast (1975), illustrations from which are in the show along with the artist’s – rather more adult-themed – poster for Andy Warhol’s Chelsea Girls (1966; above), his ground-breaking covers for Penguin Books as well as images for the Beatles, Elton John and the Rolling Stones.
Aldridge embodied the hippie aesthetic that drew its inspiration from Victorian illustration by the likes of Aubrey Beardsley and John Tenniel, and later Edward Lear, then splashed paint pots of multicolour over it and mixed in surreal and dreamy subject matter. The result was psychedelia.
Not undeservedly, Aldridge is described as ‘the man who designed the 60s’ and counts among his fans Terence Conran, Terry Gilliam, Yoko Ono and Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason, all of whom represent the flower power era.
The exhibition at the Design Museum runs until 25 January and the good news – for my inner child at least –is that The Butterfly Ball and The Grasshopper’s Feast is re-released by Templar Publishing later this month. I look forward to poring over it in great detail again soon.
www.designmuseum.org
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