FAR OUT EXHIBIT OF HIPPIE-ERA DESIGN IS SURPRISIE

"They say that if you can remember San Francisco in the late 1960s, you
weren't really there." So states San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
architecture and design curator Aaron Betsky in the text that accompanies
the terrific show "Far Out: Bay Area Design, 1967-1973" that continues
through Feb. 20.

About his assertion: well, yes and no. Maybe "true" memories of experiences
passed during San Francisco's Summer of Love and the Love Hangover that
immediately followed were lost in a marijuana-induced oblivion, but perhaps
selective memory has added to the legend. And many of the physical and
sonic artifacts of the era survive -- witness this exhibition. Janis
Joplin's hand-painted Porsche, a bead-encrusted roach clip, a fabulous
bead-and-mirror-covered throne, Wavy Gravy's trippy jumpsuit, "psychedelic"
posters for the Fillmore Auditorium, fancifully embroidered jeans and
dresses, jewelry made from beads and industrial detritus, and a
stained-glass and wood Dutch door are accompanied in the gallery by an
infectious sound track of the best locally produced music of the time. (But
whoever omitted the Airplane's "White Rabbit" from the tape deserves to be
sent to re-education camp.)

I have to admit that I approached the show with a certain trepidation. Too
much bad macram and banal tie-dying beclouded my own memory of the era.
Lunch at Greens gave me indigestion from having to look at the '60s-era
crafts that litter the place. On the eve of visiting the show, an Ikea ad
gave an image to my fear. A clock made from a slice of tree is labeled "Use
By: Sep 14 1978." The text reads, "Even furniture can go bad." Greens, take
note. It's long since been time to redecorate.

The fact overlooked during the '60s was that not everyone has something
deep inside worthy of expression. Many of those who let it all hang out
exposed things that should have remained covered. And much of the design of
the era, whether generated here or in London or Vermont, was not only ugly
but inefficient. After futilely trying to read those famous Fillmore
posters, Helvetica medium might never have looked so good.

Betsky was aware of the pitfalls in putting together such a show. He
acknowledges that the fresh creativity evident in many of the objects on
view was wiped out by a flood of mass-produced macram plant hangers and
tie-dye T-shirts that ripped it off.

In his statement, he suggests that hippie design might have had the
shortest life of any design movement. "For almost 30 years it has been
difficult to take this work seriously," he writes. "Now that we have come
to appreciate the importance of craft in a culture increasingly defined by
technology, it is perhaps time for us to realize the tremendous
contributions made by these designers to our physical environment."

And he was able to get his hands on the best work of the era. (His most
serious omission might be the lack of any work by R. Crumb and the other
cartoonists at Zap Comics.)

Much of the work supports Betsky's point that San Francisco's hippie-era
design comes out of the 19th century Arts-and-Crafts movement. An
international phenomenon that valued hand work at a time when industrial
manufacture dominated, arts and crafts flourished among Bay Area architects
and furniture and utilitarian object makers in the early years of this
century.

Similar but different -- it must have been something they smoked --
hippie-era crafts artists brought a fresh invention and a profound
iconoclasm to their love of materials.

Involvement with material is evident in much of the fabric art on view.
Marie Robertson's yarn jacket, Janet Lipkin's sweater with detachable
ornament, Devora Signer Belilove's "Oroboros" yarn wall hanging, Alexandra
Hart's embroidered jeans, Mary Ann Schildknecht's extraordinary skirt and
blouse -- embroidered while incarcerated in a Milan jail after being caught
smuggling hashish -- Debora Rapoport's tie-dye wedding dress, among others,
show a love for material and a wild invention brought to its use.

The freedom to create new forms is perhaps most evident in Michael Cooper's
extraordinary "Captain's Cha in which streamline meets hand craft in an
unlikely marriage. His sculpted hardwoods bend, swirl and sprout wooden
tendrils like climbing vines in a form so baroque that the idea that form
might follow function is utterly lost in its exuberance. (Yet it looks as
if it might actually be comfortable.)

But other works made from wood, one of the favored materials, are so
elegant that they could come seamlessly out of the earlier arts-and-crafts
tradition. Arthur Espenet Carpenter's "Shell Desk," for instance, is a work
of fine furniture-making that transcends its own conditions.

Betsky reminds us, if we need to be reminded, that much of the era's work
came with a sense of fun. Emerging from a period that has been
characterized as an age of gray-flannel conformity, most of the work in the
show is playful in expression and intent. That might be the exhibition's
most timely aspect. Caught as we are in another greed-dominated age of
conformity, it's nice to see again work that exemplifies the idea that, as
the Beatles (a non-San Francisco group) put it, "Fun is the one thing that
money can't buy."