You Call This Art?!: A Greg Irons Retrospective

The first-ever collection of one of the underground's greatest art rebels.

If he were alive today, he'd be a superstar. He was that good. But Greg Irons died just as his star was rising. He was only 37 years old when a speeding bus on a busy Bangkok street killed him in 1984. Irons was a psychedelic poster artist, an underground cartoonist, a book illustrator, and an emerging tattoo virtuoso who brought a new sensibility to an age-old art form.

This retrospective book spans his whole artistic career, from his earliest dance posters, to his ground breaking science fiction and horror comix, to his innovative and colorful tattoo art. Greg Irons was one of the elite among posters artists who worked for Bill Graham's Fillmore Ballroom in San Francisco during the Age of Aquarius, designing posters for Chuck Berry, Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother, and Paul Butterfield. You Call This Art?! reprints his finest psychedelic posters in full-color, as well as complete comic stories from Slow Death Funnies, Legion of Charlies, Deviant Slice, Yellow Dog, Thrilling Murder, and many other underground comic books. It also includes rarely seen album cover art for Jerry Garcia, Blue Cheer, Jefferson Starship and other counterculture musicians. Irons had a third career as an illustrator of children's coloring books, and pages from books including One Old Oxford Ox, Last of the Dinosaurs, Pirates, and Wyf of Bathe appear as well. Many examples of his tattoo art are also included.

Think you've seen it all already? Not a chance. This book reproduces not only his greatest artistic hits, but also never-before-seen pages from his private sketchbooks and journals, personal photographs, unpublished paintings, and works that appeared in obscure publications, like the San Francisco Organ, which published the lurid story that Mick Jagger tried to suppress.

This panoramic collection of superlative art is framed by Patrick Rosenkranz's extensive portrait of the artist, based on personal interviews with Irons, his friends, lovers, and colleagues. A candid and revealing depiction of a gifted artist who never abandoned the counterculture. An intimate expose of the all-too-human being behind some of the most revolutionary art in the underground.