{"id":28424,"date":"2025-09-10T16:30:21","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T15:30:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=28424"},"modified":"2025-09-10T14:26:40","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T13:26:40","slug":"wilfried-satty-and-the-cosmic-bicycle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2025\/09\/10\/wilfried-satty-and-the-cosmic-bicycle\/","title":{"rendered":"Wilfried S\u00e4tty and the Cosmic Bicycle"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"satty1.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Listen, Sleep, Dream (1967), a poster by Wilfried S\u00e4tty.<\/em><\/p>\n

Continuing the San Francisco theme, twenty years ago today I was visiting the city myself. Jay Babcock, Richard Pleuger and I had driven up there from Los Angeles to research some of the history of Wilfried S\u00e4tty (1939\u20131982), master collagist, psychedelic poster artist, record cover designer and book illustrator. We spent 24 hours driving around the Bay area: up to Petaluma, where we met S\u00e4tty’s friend and artistic collaborator, David Singer, a fine collage artist in his own right; then to Berkeley to talk to Walter Medeiros, custodian of the S\u00e4tty estate and one of the leading scholars of the psychedelic poster scene; finally to North Beach, where we found the house in Powell Street where S\u00e4tty was living and working in the 1960s and 70s.<\/p>\n

\"satty2.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

S\u00e4tty and an unknown woman in the artist’s basement pad\/studio at Powell Street, a place he referred to as “the North Beach U-boat”. This was from a magazine feature that I photographed at David Singer’s house. I forget the source, it may have been from a 1972 TIME article about San Francisco artists.<\/em><\/p>\n

The trip was a dizzying experience, but fascinating for what it revealed about S\u00e4tty and his work. From David Singer we learned, among other things, that the name “S\u00e4tty” had been chosen as a pseudonym by the former Wilfried Podriech for its echo of Ancient Egypt; the pronunciation, when you pay attention to the umlaut, conjures the word “Seti”. Walter Medeiros showed us stacks of original S\u00e4tty artwork, including all the collages intended for the artist’s final book, Visions of Frisco<\/em>, a visionary history of the city which was published in 2007. Medeiros later emailed me a few additional notes which I have filed somewhere, correcting my guesswork in the piece I’d written about S\u00e4tty for Strange Attractor Journal<\/em> earlier in 2005. At the time the only information I had to hand was the scant biographical information in S\u00e4tty’s books, the interview that he gave to Man, Myth and Magic<\/em> in 1970<\/a>, and a few web pages devoted to the artist which someone had put together in the late 1990s then never updated.<\/p>\n

\"satty3.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The house at 2143 Powell Street as it was in 2005. Those trees have grown considerably in the past 20 years.<\/em><\/p>\n

All of which had me looking last week to see whether S\u00e4tty had a more substantial web presence today. Happily, he does, with this dedicated site<\/a> maintained by Ryan Medeiros, Walter’s son. I’m saddened to read that Walter Medeiros is no longer with us but it’s gratifying to discover his family continuing his efforts to preserve S\u00e4tty’s legacy. S\u00e4tty is often reduced to a minor figure in the history of San Francisco poster art but he was more than this: a book creator as well as an illustrator, and a collage artist who extended Max Ernst’s engraving collage into new dimensions, using printing presses to multiply and overprint his assemblages.<\/p>\n

\"satty4.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

S\u00e4tty’s first book, The Cosmic Bicycle<\/em>, was published in 1971 by Straight Arrow Books, the publishing imprint of Rolling Stone<\/em> magazine. This is a collection of collages, a few of them in colour, in which the compositions have a distinctly Surrealist quality. S\u00e4tty’s subsequent work downplayed the wild juxtapositions in favour of greater compositional control. His subsequent collection, Time Zone<\/em> (1973), is a wordless “novel” in the manner of Max Ernst’s collage books.<\/p>\n

\"satty5.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Cosmic Bicycle<\/em> is also the title of a 4-minute animated film which brings to life some of S\u00e4tty’s pictures from the book. I linked to a copy of this years ago but that link is now defunct so here it is again<\/a>, an odd little film which runs the artwork through a solarisation process then moves pieces of them around to the accompaniment of an electronic score. (As usual with Vimeo today, you have to log in to see it.) The film was directed by Les Goldman, an animation producer who was mentioned here recently in relation to The Hangman<\/em><\/a> (1964), a short film he made with Paul Julian. Goldman’s own film seems almost amateurish in comparison but the music is by Moog pioneers Paul Beaver and Bernie Krause, credited here as Parasound Inc. Beaver and Krause’s Gandharva<\/em> album features one of S\u00e4tty’s finest cover designs<\/a>, with title lettering by David Singer. The film score isn’t the duo’s finest by any means\u2014I’d even describe it as rather annoying\u2014but it’s good to see their S\u00e4tty connection reinforced.<\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 The original Gandharva<\/a>
\n\u2022 The Occult Explosion<\/a>
\n\u2022 Wilfried S\u00e4tty album covers<\/a>
\n\u2022 Nature Boy: Jesper Ryom and Wilfried S\u00e4tty<\/a>
\n\u2022 Wilfried S\u00e4tty: Artist of the occult<\/a>
\n\u2022 Illustrating Poe #4: Wilfried S\u00e4tty<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Listen, Sleep, Dream (1967), a poster by Wilfried S\u00e4tty. Continuing the San Francisco theme, twenty years ago today I was visiting the city myself. Jay Babcock, Richard Pleuger and I had driven up there from Los Angeles to research some of the history of Wilfried S\u00e4tty (1939\u20131982), master collagist, psychedelic poster artist, record cover designer … Continue reading “Wilfried S\u00e4tty and the Cosmic Bicycle”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"New blog post: Wilfried S\u00e4tty and the Cosmic Bicycle","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,2,42,1029,7,17],"tags":[5025,369,1801,11849,14188,5143,7633,14187,7634,102],"class_list":["post-28424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animation","category-art","category-books","category-collage","category-film","category-psychedelia","tag-bernie-krause","tag-david-singer","tag-jay-babcock","tag-les-goldman","tag-parasound-inc","tag-paul-beaver","tag-richard-pleuger","tag-ryan-medeiros","tag-walter-medeiros","tag-wilfried-satty"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-7os","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28424\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}