NEW YORK — If you’re going to curate an exhibition of vintage
artwork related to the unorthodox and self-described gonzo journalist Hunter S.
Thompson, prepare for the process itself to become a bit, well, gonzo.
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Daniel Joseph Watkins learned this lesson the hard way. He had
to figure out how to move “Freak Power,” an exhibition featuring the visually
striking campaign posters designed for Thompson’s 1970 run for county sheriff
in Colorado, from his gallery based in Aspen, Colorado, to Poster House in
Manhattan, where it’s open through August 15.
The posters, designed and silk-screened by artist Thomas W.
Benton, a close friend of Thompson’s and a fellow Californian turned Aspen
activist, fused gut-punch electioneering (“Sell Aspen or Save It”) with
visceral imagery (a clenched fist set against a sheriff’s badge). Surviving
samples in pristine condition now sell for upward of $25,000. But that price
tag pales in comparison to owners’ intense emotional attachment. “It would have
been much easier to borrow a Warhol or a Rothko from some of these people,”
laughed Watkins.
“Unfortunately, later in his life, Benton became consumed with a
drug habit and had been trading and selling his artwork to several drug
dealers,” he continued. One of those figures was willing to loan out several
key Benton pieces. But he made it clear that if anything happened to them,
filing an insurance claim would be the least of Watkins’ problems.
A suitably warned Watkins felt there was ultimately one person
he could entrust to ship the posters east: himself. So last month he loaded up
a U-Haul with the contents of the exhibition and personally drove it the 30
hours and nearly 3219km to Poster House’s front doors.
“At night, I slept in the back of the truck with the artwork. I
had a little bed there with a heated electric blanket. And I had a club,” he
recalled matter-of-factly. “I had a friend following me in another car in case
anything went wrong, and we would pull over to sleep in various Walmart parking
lots.”
Poster House, the first museum in the United States devoted to
the art of posters, opened in Chelsea in 2019, and the exhibition, co-curated
with artist Yuri Zupancic, is one of three on view in its gallery spaces. In
addition to three dozen Benton posters, this show includes kinetic
ink-splattered drawings by Ralph Steadman, whose illustrations accompanied many
of Thompson’s articles; campaign trail photographs by Aspen photojournalists
David Hiser and Bob Krueger; and issues of The Aspen Wall Poster, a broadsheet
newspaper designed by Benton and written by Thompson.
For Angelina Lippert, Poster House’s chief curator, the
exhibition’s range of material offers a fascinating dichotomy. “Hunter S.
Thompson is a chaotic figure,” she said. “We’ve all seen ‘Fear and Loathing in
Las Vegas,’” the 1998 film with Johnny Depp portraying an unhinged Thompson.
Steadman’s frenetic drawings echo that pinwheeling personality. Yet, “all of
Benton’s posters are so reserved, quiet and direct in comparison,” Lippert went
on. “It makes an incredible contrast to see these two guys expressing the same
ideas in such powerfully different ways.”
To be fair, Thompson as a candidate couldn’t have been more
different from Depp’s on-screen caricature. Instead, as seen in candid footage
from Watkins’ own “Freak Power” documentary (2020), running daily as part of
the Poster House show, Thompson was thoughtful and articulate — though his
attitude toward politicking could be playfully wry. (Prepping for a public
debate with the incumbent sheriff, Thompson secretly shaved his head so he
could walk out onstage and — in the conservative parlance of the era — snidely
refer to “my long-haired opponent.”) Most importantly, he was uninterested in
mere symbolism, dismissing Norman Mailer’s 1969 New York City mayoral bid as “more
a form of vengeance than electoral politics.” Thompson was running to win.
His “Freak Power” ticket signaled a pivot point for many
Aspenites’ self-identity — catalyzing a movement to preserve the local environment
with strict limits on real estate development; overhaul a police department,
seen as wildly out of control; and legalize marijuana use. Once derided as
merely “freak” concerns, they’ve since been embraced by local law enforcement
or moved to the statute books.
“Anybody who thinks I’m kidding is a fool,” one of his local
newspaper ads declared. “739 new registrations since the September primary is
no joke in a county with a total vote of less than 3,000. So the time has come,
it seems, to dispense with evil humor and come to grips with the strange
possibility that the next sheriff of this county might very well be a
foul-mouthed outlaw journalist with some very rude notions about lifestyles,
law enforcement and political reality in America.”
In the end, Thompson fell short, as outlying areas of the county
came out strongly against him, causing him to lose the election by nearly 7
percentage points. “We ran an honest campaign, and that was the problem,” he
quipped to The Associated Press.
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