1969 Peter Gee Merrill Lynch Posters
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GUEST:
I brought three posters that I think are Pop Art, from an artist named Peter Gee. They are from my dad, who worked at Merrill Lynch in Boston from the '60s through the '80s. They were renovating the building and these posters were available. And he took them home and we've had them ever since.
APPRAISER:
What do you know about the history of Merrill Lynch, as a company?
GUEST:
Right. Well, it's, um, bigger and it's been acquired several times since my dad originally worked there. When he started there, it was called Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner, & Smith. And now today, most people know it as Merrill Lynch.
APPRAISER:
Do you remember what year your dad got these?
GUEST:
We think he got them in 1972? He then shared them with me in the early 2000s.
APPRAISER:
And as far as you know, these were office decoration?
GUEST:
They were office decorations. We think they might not have been used. They were all rolled up in tubes when he got them.
APPRAISER:
In my opinion, these are absolutely Pop Art. And yes, the artist is Peter Gee.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
And I think Peter Gee is the most famous Pop artist that no one's ever heard of. He was British-born and he moved to America in the early 1960s, and he began working with color form and color field theory and all of these sort of bright, loud, abstract, psychedelic colors. No surprise he worked with Betsey Johnson, the designer, so... A lot of times he used images of her lips, uh, in advertisements. His high-water mark, as far as fame, was in 1968, when his work was included in a retrospective of graphic design held in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. And so, during that exhibition, Peter Gee's work was on the same wall as Andy Warhol...
GUEST:
Oh, wow.
APPRAISER:
...on the same wall as Robert Indiana.
GUEST:
(softly): Wow.
APPRAISER:
And I think that really worked to sort of catapult him to a, a new l, layer of, of renown and fame.
GUEST:
Yeah.
APPRAISER:
And it's my belief that because of that exhibition, he began to get commissions from sort of unusual places, like Wall Street. And these posters are, they're great. They're Day-Glo colors, which were so in keeping with the time.
GUEST:
Yeah.
APPRAISER:
And the time is 1969. They're serigraphs. So, they were done with thick layers of ink added on top of each other. So, if you were to touch them, they would be very thick to the touch as you felt the layers of ink that were applied. I think they're great as art...
GUEST:
Yeah.
APPRAISER:
...but I also think, in a way, they're great as history, because there's a lot of technological history that's wound up in here. Like, for example, here, the poster for research.
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
I mean, these are mainframe computers. These were sort of ginormous machines. And then in the middle, for market coverage, you have all these brokers at their desks and not one of them has a computer in front of them.
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
They're all on the phone. And then by you, it's so abstract, I, I can't even tell you what's pictured there. It looks like it might be a calculator there on the bottom or something. Another great thing about these posters is the typeface. It's called Moore Computer. Most people just know it as Computer. It was designed by James H. Moore in 1968, shortly before these posters were designed. But it shows us these really were on the cutting edge of the new computerized generation. It's sort of this tumult of information and art and color. I think they're superb.
GUEST:
Yeah.
APPRAISER:
And you've kept them in great shape. To the best of my knowledge, these are the only three that he did for Merrill Lynch.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
It's unclear how many of these were printed.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
Peter Gee was based in New York, so most likely, they were printed there. As they were advertisements for a financial company, they probably printed enough for the offices around the world, but I can't imagine they printed more than 1,000 or 2,000 copies. It, it's hard to say. At auction, for each one, I would estimate them between $600 and $900.
GUEST:
Fantastic. They're beautiful, we love them. I keep them in my office at work, and every day, there's something different to see. They're just magical.
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