Gibb talk to unpack the 60s
The ‘Multivibrant 60s in Retrospect’ is the topic of a powerpoint presentation by Barry Gibb at the Ann Bryant Art Gallery in East London on Thursday this week.
Gibb will look at why the 1960s come across as such a charismatic decade.
He explains that the 50s had witnessed the rise of the postwar American dream of an affluent society along with the golden age of salacious Hollywood glamour, the youth revolt and the birth of Rock ’n Roll. During the-1960s this 50s legacy was taken to radical extremes. The 60s were also a time of race riots in the US developing into urban warfare.
Gibb further added that 1968 was the year of radical student revolutions at universities in Paris, Berlin, Washington, Prague, Chicago and Peking as well as Kent State University in America.
Britain took centre-stage in the 60s as “Swinging London” with Carneby Street fashions, including the mini-skirt and Jean Shrimpton (later to be replaced by Twiggy). Liverpool emerged as the centre of 60s pop music with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
He said although the golden age of Hollywood musicals occurred in the 50s, the 60s produced some extremely memorable musicals, like West Side Story. However, the leading film stars of the 60s were largely British: Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music, Richard Harris and Vanessa Redgrave in Camelot, and Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady.
Said Gibb: “Pop Art was the most radical break down of traditional norms in art history, expressing how we view the world through media manipulated eyes; accepting advertising kitsch and pulp-fiction illustration as contemporary concepts of reality and representing them as fine-art.
“Pop spawned the concept of a pop culture with an exploratory freedom which produced other 60s movements like Op Art (optical illusionist), opening out to psychedelic art and its flower power culture,” he said.
The talk will start at 7pm on Thursday upstairs in the main gallery of the Ann Bryant. The tickets are R40, and wine and fruit juice will be available for a small donation. —