“In the late 1800’s new tech­nol­o­gy was chang­ing the way the world worked, and the way that it looked,” the Vox video above explains. “Some peo­ple, espe­cial­ly artists, liv­ing through the tech­no­log­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion, were not so into all the new indus­try. To be blunt, they thought it was ugly.” They respond­ed with organ­ic forms and intri­cate pat­terns that evoked a pre-indus­tri­al world while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly show­cas­ing, and sell­ing, the most mod­ern ideas and prod­ucts.

Draw­ing on the hand­craft­ed aes­thet­ic of the Arts and Crafts Move­ment, the Goth­ic revival, the florid, ornate paint­ings of the Pre-Raphaelites, a fas­ci­na­tion with Japan­ese wood­block prints, and the strange, beau­ti­ful illus­tra­tions of sea crea­tures by Ernst Haeck­el, artists began to chal­lenge late Vic­to­ri­an ortho­dox­ies. The style we now know as Art Nou­veau emerged.

It went by many names: Jugend­stil, Mon­dernisme, Tiffany Style, Glas­gow Style, Stile Lib­er­ty, Sezes­sion­stil. Each iden­ti­fied a col­lec­tion of traits with which we are now famil­iar from the many hun­dreds of posters and adver­tise­ments of the time. Grand, flow­ing lines, intri­cate pat­terns, vibrant, often clash­ing col­ors, bold hand-let­ter­ing, fem­i­nine fig­ures and elab­o­rate, exot­ic themes….

The descrip­tions of Art Nouveau’s qual­i­ties also apply to the poster and album cov­er art of the psy­che­del­ic 1960s, and no won­der, giv­en the sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence of the for­mer upon the lat­ter. The artists of the acid rock peri­od rebelled not so much against indus­tri­al­iza­tion as the mil­i­tary-indus­tri­al-com­plex. At the epi­cen­ter of the move­ment was the San Fran­cis­co of Jef­fer­son Air­plane and the Grate­ful Dead.

Venues like the Fil­more and the Aval­on adver­tised the hip­pie rev­o­lu­tion with eye-catch­ing posters inspired by those that once lined the thor­ough­fares of Europe in an age before TV, radio, and neon signs. Art Nou­veau-like designs had already returned with the flower pat­terns pop­u­lar in fab­rics at the time. 60s graph­ic design­ers saw these seduc­tive styles as the key to a new psy­che­del­ic vision.

It’s easy to see why. Flow­ers, curves, pea­cocks, updates of Art Nou­veau images from the past (includ­ing skele­tons and roses)—dialed up to 11 with “eye-vibrat­ing” colors—made the per­fect visu­al accom­pa­ni­ment for the acid-fla­vored Roman­ti­cism that took root dur­ing the Viet­nam era. Even the fonts were poached from turn-of-the-cen­tu­ry graph­ic art. Famous 60s design­ers like Wes Wil­son con­fessed their admi­ra­tion for mod­ernism, “the idea,” Wil­son told Time in 1967, “of real­ly putting it all out there.”

Just as Art Nou­veau flow­ered into an inter­na­tion­al style, with some pre­scient­ly trip­py man­i­fes­ta­tions in Brazil and oth­er places, so too did the 60s psy­che­del­ic poster, spread­ing from San Fran­cis­co to every cor­ner of the globe. And as Art Nou­veau became the house style for the coun­ter­cul­ture of the ear­ly 20th century—celebrating sex­u­al and cul­tur­al exper­i­men­ta­tion and occult interests—it announced the birth of flower pow­er and its recov­ery of mod­ernism’s expres­sive free­doms.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Har­ry Clarke’s 1926 Illus­tra­tions of Goethe’s Faust: Art That Inspired the Psy­che­del­ic 60s

Ernst Haeckel’s Sub­lime Draw­ings of Flo­ra and Fau­na: The Beau­ti­ful Sci­en­tif­ic Draw­ings That Influ­enced Europe’s Art Nou­veau Move­ment (1889)

Down­load 200+ Belle Époque Art Posters: An Archive of Mas­ter­pieces from the “Gold­en Age of the Poster” (1880–1918)

Behold the Beau­ti­ful Designs of Brazil’s 1920s Art Deco Mag­a­zine, Para Todos

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Few artists have lived as many cre­ative life­times as Miles Davis did in his 65 years, con­tin­u­ing to evolve even after his death with the posthu­mous release of a lost album Rub­ber­band ear­li­er this year. The album’s cov­er, fea­tur­ing an orig­i­nal paint­ing by Davis him­self, may have turned fans on to anoth­er facet of the composer/bandleader/trumpeter’s artis­tic evolution—his career as a visu­al artist, which he began in earnest just a decade before his 1991 death.

“Dur­ing the ear­ly 1980s,” writes Tara McGin­ley at Dan­ger­ous Minds, Davis “made cre­at­ing art as much a part of his life as mak­ing music…. He was said to have worked obses­sive­ly each day on art when he wasn’t tour­ing and he stud­ied reg­u­lar­ly with New York painter Jo Gel­bard.” Nev­er one to do any­thing by half-mea­sures, Davis turned out can­vas after can­vas, though he didn’t exhib­it much in his life­time.

He paint­ed main­ly for him­self. “It’s like ther­a­py for me,” he said, “and keeps my mind occu­pied with some­thing pos­i­tive when I’m not play­ing music.” Being the intim­i­dat­ing Miles Davis, how­ev­er, it wasn’t exact­ly easy for him to find artis­tic peers with whom he could com­mune. When he first approached Gel­bard, the artist says, “I was scared to death! I could bare­ly speak.”

The two lived in the same New York build­ing and Gel­bard even­tu­al­ly relaxed enough to give Davis lessons, then lat­er became his girl­friend, col­lab­o­rat­ing with him on work like the cov­er of the 1989 album Amand­la. As she char­ac­ter­izes his style:

The way Miles paint­ed was not the way he played or the way he sketched. He was so min­i­mal and light-hand­ed in his sound, in his walk. His body was very light; he was a slight man, a del­i­cate kind of guy. His sketch­es are light and airy and min­i­mal, but when he took his brush and paint, he was dead­ly – he was like a child with paints in kinder­garten. He would pour it on and mix it until it got too mud­dy and over-paint. He just loved the tex­ture and the feel. It got all over his clothes and his hands and his hair and it was just fun for him…

Miles also found a peer in fel­low painter Joni Mitchell. She describes how he called her one day and said, “Joni, I like that paint­ing that you did. Nice col­ors. I want to come over and watch you paint.” Davis, her musi­cal hero, wouldn’t record with her (though she found out lat­er that he owned all her records). “He would talk paint­ing but he wouldn’t talk music with me.”

Davis’ paint­ings are rough and expres­sion­is­tic, a coun­ter­point to the for­mal dis­ci­pline of his music. (McGin­ley suc­cinct­ly describes them as a “sharp, bold and mas­cu­line mix­ture of Kandin­sky, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Picas­so and African trib­al art”.) He didn’t make inroads in the art world, but paint­ing did become “a prof­itable side­line,” not­ed the L.A. Times in ’89. Friends and fel­low musi­cians like Lionel Richie and Quin­cy Jones bought his work. “A mag­a­zine called Du in Zurich bought some of my sketch­es for a spe­cial edi­tion they’re putting out on me,” he said.

In 2013, a hard­cov­er edi­tion of his col­lect­ed paint­ings appeared, with a fore­word by Jones, per­haps the most avid of Miles Davis col­lec­tors. There are many oth­er voic­es in the book, includ­ing author Steve Gutterman—who inter­viewed Davis before his death and writes an introduction—and var­i­ous fam­i­ly mem­bers who con­tribute per­son­al sto­ries. Miles sums up his own “refresh­ing­ly unpre­ten­tious atti­tude” toward his art­work in one brief state­ment: “It ain’t that seri­ous.”

Pick up a copy of Miles Davis: The Col­lect­ed Art­work here.

Note: This post updates mate­r­i­al that first appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kind of Blue: How Miles Davis Changed Jazz

Hear a 65-Hour, Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Miles Davis’ Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Jazz Albums

Lis­ten to The Night When Miles Davis Opened for the Grate­ful Dead in 1970

The Influ­ence of Miles Davis Revealed with Data Visu­al­iza­tion: For His 90th Birth­day Today

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness