Making Waves: A Tribute to John Severson & Rick Griffin
Making Waves: A Tribute to John Severson & Rick Griffin

Surf Culture Art founders, John Severson (left) and Rick Griffin, pictured here in the 1980s.

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Almost as soon as the ancient Polynesian sport of surfing invaded California’s shores in the 20th century, an entire socioeconomic subculture began springing up around it.  The beaches of Southern California became the center of a “surf culture” that hit its high point from the late 1950s through the 1960s and is still active today.  From developing its own music, fashion and jargon to creating its own films, publications and art, surf culture became a signature aspect of American popular culture and a world-recognized element of the California lifestyle.

The Hilbert Museum of California Art at Chapman University is currently paying tribute to two of the leading artists of the surf culture movement—John Severson (1933-2017) and Rick Griffin (1944-1991).  See their work through March 17 at the exhibition “Making Waves,” curated by writer and artist Gordon McClelland.

Both men were multi-talented fine artists, as well as writers and surfers.  They worked together on surf culture’s foundational publication, Surfer magazine, which Severson created and edited.  In so doing, they inadvertently established what has become known as Surf Culture Art.

John Severson

John Severson is widely acknowledged as the first person to produce a series of paintings devoted to surf culture imagery.  He exhibited those works in the mid-1950s at the University of California, Long Beach to complete his MFA degree.

McClelland, a close friend of both Griffin and Severson, comments on Severson’s initial foray into Surf Culture Art.  “John’s first surf-related oil paintings were influenced by modern art approaches, including Expressionism, Cubism and Fauvism.  His first exhibition met with enough success to warrant him receiving additional exhibitions at commercial art galleries in Laguna Beach.”

Severson began surfing in the 1940s and remained a dedicated surfer and surf culture artist throughout his life.  He was also an avid and gifted filmmaker of thrilling surf culture documentaries.  His classic films of the late 1950s and early 1960s were among the most popular and innovative of that era, and his 1969 psychedelic-fueled “Pacific Vibrations” served as a counterpoint to the highly Hollywood-ized “Gidget” and Frankie Avalon beach-party movies.

Rounding Kaena Point 

Severson’s art is imaginative and colorful, incorporating ideas of abstraction while remaining firmly representational.  His 1970 painting “Rounding Kaena Point” depicted above and currently on view at the Hilbert Museum, shows Severson, with his brother Joe, driving around Hawaii in their jalopy, surfboards strapped to the top, hunting for outstanding surfing locations.  Kaena Point, on the westernmost tip of Oahu, is noted for its extraordinarily big and powerful waves, especially during the winter months.  Severson captures the overwhelming power of the enormous waves in this painting, making the roaring surf the focus of the work as the awesome power of nature dwarfs the brothers in their tiny car.

Other Severson works on display at the Hilbert include imaginative watercolors of surf spots from California to Hawaii, and even a painting of a movie theater, open to the ocean and packed with people, showing his films in Pacific Beach.  There is also a selection of historical photographs, posters and early volumes of Surfer magazine on display.  Severson passed away in May 2017 at the age of 83, after battling leukemia.

Rick Griffin

Rick Griffin was a high school student in 1960 when he began drawing surf-related works for Greg Noll Surfboards and Surfer Magazine.  Indeed, it was Surfer’s founder-editor, Severson, who launched Griffin’s professional art career by reproducing his art in the magazine; thus providing Griffin with international exposure.

Griffin went on to produce art for the San Francisco rock music hippie culture, some of which included surf images.  He contributed to the underground “comix” scene and designed some of the Grateful Dead’s best-known posters and album covers.

He then returned to living in Southern California, where he rode the waves regularly and produced a number of surf-related art works well into the late 1980s.  Griffin became a born-again Christian in 1970, which highly influenced his art from that point on, as he added deeply felt religious imagery to his creative palette.

Works by Griffin on display at the Hilbert Museum include the original and rarely exhibited painting “Pacific Vibrations,” the poster design for the Severson film.  One of the best-known and most outstanding American psychedelic paintings of the period, the work is now owned by a private collector on the East Coast.

“(Rick) finished the poster, and it was a great poster,” said Severson in a filmed interview for the Laguna Art Museum’s Griffin retrospective in 2007.  “He said, ‘I’ll give it to you tomorrow.’  But then he had a friend in, and his friend and he got into some potion.  He decided overnight that the poster wasn’t what he wanted.  I came in the next day, and it was white—the poster was gone!  He had painted over it and was starting a whole new poster. And that also was a great, great poster!”

Curator McClelland further expanded on the history of the “Pacific Vibrations” poster: “Whenever Rick did art, he drew from his life experiences and visions.  The psychedelic version of the Hopi sun mask rising above the waterline is from a photo trip Rick took to Monument Valley with photographer Bob Seideman and members of the legendary rock band Blind Faith, which included Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood.  When they got off the private plane in Monument Valley, Rick saw a simplified version of the sun mask image on a billboard advertisement for a nearby trading post.  He then incorporated his version into the art."

The exhibition also includes examples of some of Griffin’s intricately hand-drawn surfer “comix.”  In them, Griffin spotlighted his popular character, “Murphy,” a sort of hapless young Everyman surfer who gets into scrapes but somehow always triumphs.  The youthful surfing audience immediately identified with the cartoon character, who went on to appear on countless surf decals and in Griffin’s much-beloved comix pages in Surfer magazine and elsewhere.

Sadly, Griffin died in a motorcycle accident in 1991 at the age of 47, but his influence on poster and album-cover art, comics and surfing art remains as strong as it ever was.  His art has skyrocketed in value as new generations have discovered him.

Says curator McClelland, “This show celebrates the lives and art of John and Rick, who were not only great artists, but truly fine human beings.  They possessed boundless creative energy and a love for surfing and living life.”

“Making Waves: A Tribute to John Severson and Rick Griffin” is on exhibit through March 17, 2018 at the Hilbert Museum of California Art, 167 North Atchison St., Old Towne Orange.  Tuesday-Saturday, 11 am to 5 pm.  (NOTE: museum will be closed March 18-29 to install new exhibitions.)  Admission is free, and there is free parking in front of the museum (with permit obtained at front desk). Information: 714-516-5880 or www.HilbertMuseum.org 

Article Published in the
Mar / Apr 18 edition of the Old Towne Orange Plaza Review
Written by Mary Platt Photo by Debi McClelland
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