Dennis Larkins
| Dennis Larkins | |
|---|---|
| Born | Dennis Larkins May 12, 1943 Abilene, Kansas, U.S. |
| 🏳️ Nationality | American |
| 🏫 Education | Kansas City Art Institute, Yale University, Colorado University |
| 💼 Occupation | |
| Known for | Painter |
| Notable work | Why They Can't Go Back Two-Fisted Justice Sink Jesus The Reality of Nothing |
| 🌐 Website | http://www.dennislarkins.com |
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Dennis Larkins (born May 12, 1943) is an American artist, best known for his Grateful Dead posters and album cover art, as well as the massive outdoor concert sets he created for the 60's rock impresario Bill Graham (promoter). As his painting career developed, he became closely associated with the Los Angeles Lowbrow (art movement).
Biography
Early life and education
Dennis Larkins, who was born in the state of Kansas and raised in Colorado, began his creative endeavors as a child. His earliest artistic memories are of painstakingly copying Disney comic book covers and partnering with his older brother (starting when they were children) in the creation of complex and highly detailed model railroad dioramas built from scratch and constructed out of scrounged materials.[1][2] He went on to study painting at Kansas City Art Institute, Yale University, and Colorado University.[3]
Career
Larkins' early art career focused on painting landscapes around Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico. In the early 1970s, he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and began painting on a monumental scale scenery for the San Francisco Opera. This led to a ten year association with Bill Graham (promoter) as a designer, art director, and scenic artist for the massive concert sets of the annual "Day on the Green" rock festivals held at the Oakland Coliseum featuring iconic 70's rock bands such as Led Zeppelin, Eagles (band), Santana (band), Van Halen, and many others.[4] The apex of Larkins' concert set design career came with his collaboration with the graphic artist named Kazu on The Rolling Stones American Tour 1981.[3] The previous year, after creating an event poster for the Grateful Dead's 15-show residency at the Warfield Theatre in San Francisco, Larkins produced another poster design commemorating an eight-night series of sets put on by the band at Radio City Music Hall. Due to objections from the Radio City management office, the poster's sales were cut short and remaining copies were destroyed. Enough survived, however, to make the poster a collectors' item.[5] The following year, Larkins created the cover art for the Dead Set (album).
Later in the 1980s, given the vagaries of the concert music business and family obligations, he pivoted from live music to having a career in Los Angeles as a designer and art director working for the Walt Disney (company), that is, "Imagineering" or designing sets for Disney theme park events and attractions, and subsequently, as a designer and art director for the Warner Bros. Studio Store. [6]
Throughout his career in the entertainment industry, Larkins continued to paint, eventually showing his art in the emerging Lowbrow (art movement) in Los Angeles in the 1990s.[2] Larkins' fine art combines painting and relief sculpture on a canvas and/or panel backing, building up intricate layers of proprietary materials developed from years of experimentation for a three-dimensional effect.[2][7][6] Described as "the Kurt Vonnegut of visual art"[4], Larkins references vintage Popular culture, culled from from the pulp magazines, comics, and advertisements of his youth to construct open-ended narratives in his three-dimensional paintings. He has shown in galleries internationally as well as in galleries from Los Angeles to New York, and currently shows at Keep Contemporary Gallery in Santa Fe.[8]
Since the early 2010s, Larkins has occasionally returned to rock poster art, creating a series of pieces for the bands Moonalice and Doobie Decibel System.[9]
Personal life
Starting in the late 1960s Larkins has lived off and on, and currently resides in, Santa Fe, New Mexico.[6] In 2010, he and his son David collaborated on a biography and career retrospective, Startling Art: Revealing the Art of Dennis Larkins, published by Last Gasp Press.
Exhibitions and collections
Larkins exhibits his work at KEEP Contemporary Gallery in Santa Fe. Collectors of his work include Cheech Marin, Don Henley, Baron Wolman, and the Estate of Bill Graham.[6]
Selected publications
- Startling Art: Revealing the Art of Dennis Larkins
- The Art of Rock
- Rock Graphic Originals: Revolutions in Sonic Art from Plate to Print '55 -'88
- Grateful Dead Scrapbook: The Long Strange Trip in Stories, Photos, and Memorabilia
- Art of the Dead
- The Moonalice Legend (vols. II–IX)
- La Luz de Jesus 25: The Little Gallery That Could
- ¡Orale! Kings and Queens of Cool
- I Am 8-Bit
website: http://www.dennislarkins.com
References
- ↑ "NMPBS ¡COLORES!: Painter Dennis Larkins - YouTube". www.youtube.com. Retrieved 2020-12-25.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Greenwood, Amy (2012-07-22). "Startling Art! A Conversation with Dennis Larkins". News | Circus Posterus. Retrieved 2020-12-25.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Meriwether, Nicholas (2014). So Many Roads: The World in the Grateful Dead. San Jose, California: San Jose State University. p. 125. Search this book on
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 "Dennis Larkins - Much More Than". Santa Fe Reporter. Retrieved 2020-12-25.
- ↑ "Grateful Dead Radio City, 1980 - Band - Items - Bahr Gallery". www.bahrgallery.com. Retrieved 2020-12-25.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Roberts, Kathleen (16 May 2021). "'Eaten alive by my own art'". Albuquerque Journal. Retrieved 19 November 2021.
- ↑ Abatemarco, Michael. "Dennis Larkins at KEEP Contemporary". Santa Fe New Mexican. Retrieved 2020-12-24.
- ↑ "Dennis Larkins Archives". Keep Contemporary. Retrieved 2020-12-25.
- ↑ "Moonalice Posters by Dennis Larkins". Moonalice Posters: The Art of Moonalice. Retrieved 19 November 2021.
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