David Edward Bird captured the vortices and energy of the 1960s and early 70s, and was forgotten for concerts of hit stage musicals such as Jimi Hendrix, Who and the Rolling Stones, and “The Folies” and “The Folies.” It was captured by attaching colored pinwheels on a poster without any problems. He passed away on February 3rd in Albuquerque. He was 83 years old.
His husband and only survivor Giolino Becerra said the cause of death in the hospital was pneumonia caused by lung damage from Covid.
Mr. Bird has named his name since 1968 with impressive posters such as Jefferson Airplane, Iron Butterfly, Philmo Eight traffic, and Lower Manhattan Barhalla, operated by powerhouse promoter Bilgraham.
For a concert in Jimi Hendrix's experience that year, Mr. Bird rendered guitar wizard hair in the circle's field.
Mr. Bird also gave a visual stamp on Who's landmark rock opera “Tommy” when he won the Metropolitan Opera House in New York for several months at the Filmo Eight in October 1969. I've put it there. later. In 1973 he shared a Grammy Award for an illustrated work on the direction of “Tommy” by the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
Byrd, who culminated at the violent Altamont Festival in Northern California due to his poster for the Rolling Stones' 1969 US tour, did not mind the band's increasingly ominous image. Instead, he chose an illustration of nude yoke, swirling fabrics of elegant women to draw inspiration for Eadwear Muybridge's late 19th century film.
Byrd's theatrical production included a surreal poster for “The Folies.” This is the evocation of Stephen Sondheim's music and lyrics and the Broadway in 1971 during the Siefeld Follies era. The design featured the cracked faces of a sad-looking woman wearing a star-studded headdress that spelled out the title of the show.
The poster was a hit enough for a meeting in his office near the Winter Garden Theatre, where producer Edgar Lansbury called Mr. Bird and “The Folies” was playing, and in the same year I asked to design for off-Broadway productions “God Spell,” a story from a native of the Gospel of St. Matthew.
In his 2023 book, “Poster Child: David Edward Bird's Psychedelic Art & Technicolor Life,” Bird wrote Robert Vongaven, and Lansbury told him to look through the window with his “folly” image. It reminded me of.
“I want that poster,” he said, “and I want it to be yes.”
Mr. Bird, original posters from Woodstock Music and Art Fair in 1969, featured a neoclassical image of a naked woman with an ur, and for various logistical reasons, he is now famous for his image. I missed the history brush when replaced by. A white bird perched on the neck of a guitar. Mr. Bird walked around it.
“I didn't think of it as 'branding' for the event,” he said of the poster. “I thought it was a souvenir from the event.”
Byrd was impressed by the work of San Francisco's so-called Big Five psychedelic poster artist. An explosion of colors and fonts that look bent and seeped like a Salvador Dali clock using a kaleidoscope-like pattern.
However, based on 3,000 miles from the Hate Ashbury scene, Mr. Byrd was influenced by Broadway and advertising, adopting standard typefaces and based on the European Art Nouveau movement of the 1890s. Thomas La Padura, an adjunct professor of illustration at the Platt Institute in Brooklyn, taught by Mr. Byrd in the 1970s, says his work is “like the art of acid nouveau.”
But Mr. Byrd was able to enjoy the free freedom that the music world of that time was given. “Lock had no basic subject matter,” he wrote in “Poster Child.” “The only thing that caught my eye was what you wanted to do.”
David Edward Byrd was born on April 4, 1941 in Cleveland, Tennessee. His parents divorced when he was young, and he spent most of his youths in Miami Beach with his mother and his wealthy stepfather, Al Miller, executive at the restaurant chain, Howard Johnson. I spent time.
After earning his Bachelor's degree in Fine Art and a Master's degree in Stone Lithography from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in Pittsburgh, Andy Warhol's alma mater, he settled in a commune in upstate New York. . College friends, including Joshua White, who designed the stunning light show for Fillmore East, by Irish-born artist and creepy master Francis Bacon, connected him with Mr. Graham.
Filmo Eight was closed in 1971, but that did not mark the end of Mr. Byrd's musical piece. For a Grateful Dead concert at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island in 1973, he self-consciously became a boogie under the horny catchphrase “Swell Dance Concert” and the purest of two pretty 1950s teenagers I came up with an illustration.
Byrd also produced a retro album cover for Lou Reed's 1974 album, Sally Cand Dance, as well as a poster for the band Kiss. He made his foray into Hollywood with a poster for the film adaptation of Natanael West's dystopian Hollywood novel The Day of the Locust.
Byrd moved to Los Angeles in 1981, where he worked as art director for Van Halen's “Fair Warning” tour. Ten years later, he spent four years as art director for the national gay news publication The Advocate, and in the 1990s he worked in consumer products as an illustrator for Warner Bros.
He and mosaic artist Becerra moved to Albuquerque last year.
Byrd said he often felt that the artwork was more fulfilling than the end result. “The final art product is simply the remains of doodoo, trash, and creative experiences,” he said in his book. “The golden moments in my life have always been the personal, magical world of 'aha!' for a moment. “
