Love Me This Year 1968
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| Martin Sharp, Love Me This Year, offset lithograph poster, Splash Posters, c.February 1968. |
In the March 1968 issue of London OZ magazine an advertisement appeared for two posters issued by Splash Posters - Love Me This Year and UFO over Vietnam. From the small, grainy, black and white images in the OZ magazine notice (reproduced below), they both appeared unsigned. The OZ Splash advertisement reproduced an image of Love Me This Year (Splash catalogue number A130), plus a reference to UFO over Vietnam (catalogue number A142) which was illustrated on page 25 of the magazine. In regard to the first, the precise elements of the illustrated collage could not be identified.
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| Splash Posters, OZ magazine #10, London, March 1968, page 34. |
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| UFO over Vietnam, OZ magazine #10, London, March 1968, page 25. |
The advertisement was informative. Splash Posters Ltd operated out of London at the time (1968), alongside a number of similar countercultural ephemeral poster and underground press printing ventures. It specialised in high quality, limited edition art posters, with an Art Nouveau flair, in line with the contemporary trend and interest in the work of turn-of-the century graphic artists such as Alphonse Muncha and Aubrey Beardsley. The Splash posters were in no way revolutionary or Pop, but reflected a retro artistic sensibility. 1968 was the height of the countercultural revolution in western society, specifically the United States and Great Britain, and an explosion of interest in the new and everyday pop culture and psychedelic posters then coming out of metropolitan centres such as London, San Francisco, Detroit and Paris. Musical events, protests, community gatherings and Pop icons were promoted through the printing of thousands of mostly cheap, offset lithographed posters. These were publically posted on billboards or telegraph poles, handed out gratis, or sold through magazines and student newspapers.
The Splash posters notice referred to above was an interesting placement in OZ, as the magazine, and its graphics art editor Martin Sharp, were closely associated with the rival London-based firm of Big O Posters which operated from mid' 1967 through to the early 1970s. Up to that point, all of Sharp's poster work had been with Big O. It is possible that there was some connection between Big O and Splash, though this is not clear.
In regards to UFOs, Sharp had edited the previous (February 1968) UFO-themed issue of OZ, and was obviously intrigued by the subject, possibly as a result of his indulgence in hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD. It is unclear whether he was the artist responsible for UFO over Vietnam, as there is nothing obviously reflecting his style in the smallish illustration published on page 25 of OZ. There were a number of artists working with the magazine at that time. Also, the previous issue may have spurred one of them on to produce the work, which was to become a Splash poster. No more is known about this print, and no copy has been identified to date (May 2021) by this author in any public or private collection. The same is not the case for Love Me This Year.
The Love Me This Year poster was, according to the OZ advertisement, printed in the British standard size - 20 x 30 inches - and published in a 'special' edition of 500 copies. It is likely the UFO over Vietnam poster was treated in a similar manner. According to the advertisement, both retailed for 7/6d each, posted, or £2.2. combined. Love Me This Year was a collage, whilst UFO over Vietnam was a comic-like drawing, in the style of Lichtenstein's WHAAM! The reproduction of the latter in the magazine left the precise borders and content unclear. The authorship was also not indicated, as noted above. Sharp was cited as the artist responsible for Love Me This Year within the advertisement. Both were apparently; printed in 3 colours, with the latter to be published in March 1968, suggesting that Love Me This Year had already been printed when the advertisement was being prepared during February for the March edition of OZ. The text accompanying the advertisement was also interesting in its linking of Sharp to Love Me This Year. Martin Sharp was a long-time fan and proponent of collage, and it is therefore highly likely that he was the artist responsible for the work. Likewise, he had extensive experience with black and white illustration, working as a cartoonist for Australian newspapers and magazines between 1962-66, prior to arriving in London in May of 1966. Therefore he may have been responsible for UFO over Vietnam, as he was interested in both of those subjects.
The advertisement itself was a witty send-up of similar pieces in more up market magazines, of which OZ definitely was not! Sharp, who came from a relatively wealthy Australian family, cared little for money and was keen to see his art dispersed as widely as possible, and most especially in the underground press of the date, or as everyday, cheap posters for young people to post on their bedroom walls. His work with OZ and Big O Posters was an expression of this. The association with Splash Posters was different, and something of a sellout to the countercultural ideal. The advertisement text therefore reads as follows, with a somewhat tongue-in-cheek tone:
AN UNPARALLED OFFER!
(Even by the Sunday Times!)
Magnificent offer for discriminating art connoisseurs and collectors. A wonderful investment in these days of financial insecurity. A special limited edition of 500 sheets of the finest quality White Art Paper (20ins x 30ins), signed, numbered and dated in his own hand by the renowned artist Martin Sharp.
Art critic Phillipe Mora, comments on this original offer: "This limited hand-signed edition provides an opportunity not to be missed. I have already collected five of these original works for my personal collection."
Send 2gns cheque / PO to Connoisseurs, OZ Magazine, Fine Art Department, 38a Palace Gardens Terrace, London W8.
During the late 1960s Sharp and Mora - who both lived in The Pheasantry building on Kings Road, London - were very much against the production of posters for a pure collector market. They abhorred commodification. In fact, they saw the production of Big O Posters and the like as aimed at the younger generation and fellow members of the counterculture, whereby the posters were sold relatively cheaply to be hung up on walls or in public places to promote events. They were ephemeral 'ready-mades', as defined by Marcel Duchamp, to be used, enjoyed and then binned. Of course, many people saw such items as true works of art and sought to collect and preserve them. The OZ advertisement can therefore be read as a send-up in the context of the magazine, which definitely had no pretensions as an organ of an upper class, wealthy, connoisseur market. But, there may also have been a foundation in reality. By the end of 1968, as Sharp became aware of the incredible popularity of his Bob Dylan Blowin' in the Mind poster - and the money to be reaped from the fact that more than 100,000 copies would be printed - he was likely becoming more at ease with the commodification of his art, especially to support his London lifestyle and following his return to Australia in 1969. This continued through to his death in Sydney in January 2013, where, over the years, he issued numerous special, signed and numbered limited editions of silkscreened and offset lithographed posters and related promotional material, including t-shirts. All of these supplemented the income of this very independent artist.
True or false?
This legitimacy of the Splash poster/s advertisement in the 1968 issue of OZ was initially questioned by this author when he first noticed it back in 2015. This was due to the absence of evidence for their existence half a century after the possible production and promotion as revealed by OZ. However, if we look at the contemporary records, the truth would suggest otherwise i.e. that the posters were legitimate. For example, the publication of Love Me This Year is supported by the fact that in OZ magazine number 13 of June 1968 - three months after the initial advertisement - the rear cover featured a three-page spread entitled Big O Poster Show which included reproductions in dark blue of 57 posters, and not all bearing the Big O imprint. Included amongst them was Love Me This Year (reproduced below).
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| OZ magazine #13, London, June 1968, rear cover. |
This would further suggest a link between Big O and Splash, at least in regard to distribution. When the present author was compiling an initial listing of posters by Martin Sharp in 2015, he approached Phillipe Mora - the artist's intimate friend from that period and also mentioned in the sales notice - seeking information on Love Me This Year. Mora's response was unequivocal - he suggested that the OZ advertisement was a fraud and indicated that he had no knowledge of the poster. Despite extensive research at the time, no extant copies could be located, giving rise to the possibility that the two OZ advertisements from 1968 were, indeed, fakes. The existence of Love Me This Year was therefore open to confirmation, beyond the two references cited above. However, this changed in December 2020 when the author located an online record of an auction by Tennants UK held on 11 April 2018. Therein, a lot of seven posters from the 1960s was offered, with four Splash posters. The notice included a full colour reproduction of the offset lithographed Love Me This Year in black and bronze on a white base.
Another lot from that auction included a damaged (torn) copy of the poster, reinforcing its existence amidst the suite of Splash posters then on offer. A close look of the two images revealed details of the image of the voluptuous young woman from the fin de siècle era (i.e. late 1800s), some of the collage elements added by the artist, and the extent of the original manuscript hand writing seen running along the bottom of the poster.
These two images also revealed the colouring of the poster - black and bronze (light and dark?) - though the OZ advertisement had listed a three colour printing. The central image was of a woman from the turn of the century, with a small, heart sharped photograph of a bearded man on her chest. The poster is not typical of the work of Sharp from this period - usually witty and psychedelic - though it is collage-based, and in line with the "connoisseur" label associated with Splash. Sharp had utilised collage from his earliest days as an artist, during the 1950s, and this was in many ways a typical example of the Surrealist ideas he would often bring to bear in such works.
This discovery of the two auction images from 2018 initiated the writing of the current blog. It is the hope of the author to obtain a copy of the poster for further study, and to assist in the process of revealing the extent of work carried out by Martin Sharp during his years in England between 1966-1970.
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References
[Auction], Tennants, UK, 11 April 2018.
Neville. Richard (editor), Splash Posters, OZ magazine #10, London, March 1968, page 34.
-----, [Posters], OZ magazine #13, London, June 1968.
Unknown, Love Me This Year [poster], Mabey Collection, British Council Collection.
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Last updated: 21 June 2023
Michael Organ, Australia
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