Posts

Martin Sharp meets Michelangelo

Image
Martin Sharp & Michelangelo, Live Give Love , BOP4, Big O Posters, London, 1968.  Offset lithograph print in black ink on silver foil-coated card, 20 x 30 inches. Martin Sharp's 1968 poster Live Give Love  is an adaptation of a section of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel fresco The Creation of Man  (1511-12). Renaissance high art here meets Sixties "high art" in a glistening piece of psychedelia. The poster forms a companion piece to Sharp's more famous Wheels of Fire album cover of the same date, commissioned by his friend and flat-mate Eric Clapton for the latter's rock band Cream . The two works, as printed during 1968 in black ink on silver foil-coated card, present Christian and Eastern religious icons in a manner accessible to a young, contemporary audience familiar with the effects of hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD. The simple text of Live Give Love reflects the dominant themes of peace and love which were at the heart of the counte