Griffin Flying Eyeball T-shirt?
Alex Kurylak
get one. About 10 years ago I saw a guy on the street with one. It was
purple-ish tie-died with the familiar flying eyeball and it said
Jimi Hendrix.
If anyone can help, please let me know. Thanks.
-Alex
Tim Ames
that has a wide variety. I'm not sure if they have exactly what
you're looking for but they do have a lot of Jimi shirts.
Tim
Alex Kurylak
"print" so it wouldn't be on regular sites. Really, if anyone knows
where to get one or has one to buy, I'm willing to pay decent money for
it. Thanks.
-Alex
Olompali4
I have owned 3..blue, beige and orange/red tiedye..the blue and beige were
exact replicas of the poster..and now are pillowcases due to fading(Icouldn't
throw them out..the tiedye has only Jimi's namd (no Albert King etc info found
on the poster replicas) and it was issued by "The Estate of Jimi Hendrix" per
the little inscription..The shirt surely looks to be out of print, but I
imagine not for long.(Ebay?) Mouse/Kelly studios also have a flying eye shirt
(albeit tamer than Griff's) and you may like to try Mouse studios on the
web..Mouse is pricey but he may whip up a custom job.
Anyway....
Some words on BG-105, Rick Griffin's "Eyeball."
By Eric King
It is quite possible that the most widely known image in Rock 'n' Roll is Rick
Griffin's "Eyeball," Bill Graham number 105, done for a 1968 concert by Jimi
Hendrix, John Mayall and Albert King. This image has been found painted on
tribal buffalo skulls in the jungles of Thailand, printed on T-shirts in the
Chilean desert and tattooed on Japanese punks in Osaka. It would not be
surprising if it eventually wound up as a sticker on a space suit on the moon.
Unfortunately until now there has been no recognition of its actual symbology
by the general public and more than a little denial of its intended meaning by
the circle of people who knew him and who should have known his ideas on this
topic. This is a great loss because this is not simply a trademark logo like
the Rolling Stones' "Lips" or the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper." This is one of the
most profoundly important works of graphic art created in the last half of the
twentieth century, the masterwork of a genius.
If there is anything which characterized the hippie culture of the sixties, it
was the conflict between the two basic forms of love, the love of the spirit
and the love of the flesh. Every hippie I ever spoke with aspired to reach a
higher spiritual plane than that offered by the materialistic culture of the
late 1950's and early 1960's, and virtually every last one of them, myself
included (I occasionally spoke to myself), sought to begin this quest for
spiritual love by loving one's neighbor...in the fleshly sense. It was also
considered quite a good idea that this carnal ecstasy be enhanced by the
consumption of a wide variety of licit and illicit pharmaceuticals.
Eventually more than a few people began to consider the possibility that there
might be some conflict between the love of the spirit and the love of the body.
Rick Griffin was among them. While most of the people who experienced this
internal struggle spent years agonizing over it privately eating themselves
alive or publicly bothering anyone willing to listen, Rick managed to turn his
inner turmoil into great art.
Rick's answer to this duality was Jesus, but he did not go directly to
fundamentalist Christianity. First Rick saw indulgence in the corporeal as sin
and knew he had indulged. Drugs or no drugs, Rick was a visionary and a mystic,
and then sometime after coming to believe he had sinned, he saw the "Eyeball."
Yes, Rick was from the Southern California surfing community, and, yes, he was
familiar with the flying eyeball logo/signature of the pinstriper von Dutch,
but that eyeball was a friendly, pleasant fellow, and there were occasions when
Rick used this image in his art. But the BG-105 eyeball is neither friendly nor
pleasant. It is Rick's vision of the all-seeing eye of God the father, the Old
Testament "jealous and angry God" before whom Rick felt we are all-wanting, all
guilty, all unworthy sinners doomed to burn forever on a lake of fire. Rick saw
this flaming eye in the sky that he believed saw everything and forgave
nothing, this eye bearing the "memento mori" skull in its terrifying claw, and
he sought something to intermediate between him and that awful eye. What Rick
found was the vision of Jesus which he portrayed quite frequently in his art,
for example, the beatific "Oracle" cover.
This essay is not about saying Rick was right or wrong, that fundamentalist
Christianity is the final truth or merely part of a distraction in the quest
for true spirituality. It is about recognizing that Rick thought it was the
truth and created the "Eyeball" with the specific intent of warning us about
what he believed was our fate if we did not accept Jesus as our personal savior
as he had. Talking about the "Eyeball" without talking about this is like
talking about Michaelangelo's Sistine ceiling or Bach's B minor mass without
mentioning Christianity. It can be done, but it is dishonest.
Rick saw visions all the time, the great majority like Family Dog number 101,
"The Source," were wonderfully biophilic, but BG-105 was not. It was horrifying
for him, and it is the sign of his greatness as an artist that he was able to
capture this horrifying vision on paper and show it to us, communicate the
depths of his desolation about it so we can understand what his feelings were
at that most dark and barren instant when it came to him. To call the "Eyeball"
anything less is to deny Rick the recognition of his true brilliance. Many have
undergone this dark night of the soul, and many have sought to capture it in
art, but few have succeeded with anything approaching the power with which Rick
depicted for us this, the nadir of human experience.
Copyright Eric King 1996