Harlow's
Artist
Jerry W. McDaniel
Datec. 1969
MediumOffset Lithograph
Dimensions38 x 25 in. (96.5 x 63.5 cm)
ClassificationsPoster
Credit LinePoster House Permanent Collection
Object numberPH.5837
DescriptionHarlow’s Discotheque on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, presumably named after Jean Harlow, the irreverent 1930s film siren, was opened by real estate mogul Arnold Stein in 1965. He quickly commissioned illustrator Jerry McDaniel to create a visual identity for the club and in 1966, two years before he designed this one, McDaniel produced a hugely successful poster for the venue; in it, he used the sinuous black-and-white lines of Aesthetic Movement artists like Aubrey Beardsley to describe girls in the latest op-art and geometric-patterned fashions demonstrating popular dance crazes of the late 1960s. McDaniel designed this poster on yellow paper in a similar graphic style but replaced the dancers with a 1920s flapper supported, unaccountably, by a flamenco musician in a tux. This was the disco of the late 1960s, intended in affluent neighborhoods like this one for a well-heeled, white crowd that danced to the music of British pop and rock groups as well as that of Motown artists and James Brown. The sweaty, countercultural associations and specific disco music, much less the dramatic posturing of John Travolta, that defined disco at its peak in the 1970s, had not yet emerged in the city’s nightlife. On View
Not on view
