BOLDTYPE ISSUE #41: Artwork By
The cover of this issue is a 1971 advertisement for an alternative department store and was printed originally in an issue of Mainmise ("control"), a countercultural magazine published in Montreal. The bold image, reprinted in Free Press: Underground and Alternative Publications 1965-1975 (Universe/Rizzoli, 2006), is just one in Jean-François Bizot's handsome chronicle of an era's independent publications.
A pioneer in free thinking, Bizot purchased the Parisian magazine Actuel in 1970 and revamped it into an iconoclastic pulpit for a host of radical issues — embracing the burgeoning environmental movement, feminism, queer culture, and black power — while retaining its psychedelic house style. After a five-year hiatus in the mid-'70s, Bizot resuscitated Actuel in 1979, publishing it for another 15 years.
Mainmise, a kindred francophone publication, with similar interests in drugs, music, and bohemianism, was launched the same year as Actuel, by the trio of Jean Basile, George Khal, and Christian Allègre. The advertisement above, for the store I Tout Croche, typifies the rebellious aesthetic found in alternative magazines of the time. The handwritten text scrawled across the androgynous model's hand is barely legible but promotes a store where "you will find clothing full of colors and fantasy" — individualism being perhaps the baby boomers' most enduring legacy.
- H.G. Masters
