Today there is a whole genre of surf art. It’s usually illustration-based and characterized by a mixture of psychedelic, surrealist, punk and comic book-derived influences. How did we get here? When we think of surf art of the 1960s, images like John Van Hammersveld’s iconic screen print, Endless Summer, jumps to mind. But in fact, the cross-over was much more extensive and varied. In 1958, John Severson made his first indie surfer film, Surf. The film was based on footage from California and his time as an Army-employed surfer in Hawaii. The film was well-received in the surfer community, and in 1959 he set out to make a sequel — Surf Safari. His films drew more and more local attention, and also some local competition: Bud Browne, Greg Noll, and Bruce Brown to name a few. At first, the films were mainly advertised via bulletins hung around town. However, with the growing competition, Severson set out to make his advertising more noticeable. He wanted to make a book filled with surfer related pictures and information as a way to advertise for his films.

After working for some time on the first book, Severson finally released it in 1962. The book contained mainly pictures with only one article entitled Surfing for Beginners, a short fiction piece, and a few drawings. In the entire book, there was only one advertisement for Severson’s films. The book was rough, with blurry images, poorly fitting pages, and lots of white space. However, that rough feel made the book more authentic and thus hit home with the local surfer community. Thousands of books were sold within the first months. Severson had initially planned to release one book each year, but after seeing the book’s warm reception he changed that to once quarterly. Thus began Surfer Magazine.

Although Surfer magazine began as a way to help commercialize Severson’s films, it quickly evolved into a leading cultural icon for all surfers. In the 1960s, surfing culture was facing an issue with the public’s perception of the sport. Surfing had been popularized by the 1959 Hollywood movie, Gidget, as well as music like that of the Beach Boys. Along with its growing fanbase came a few troublemakers. The cultural appeal of the surfing lifestyle attracted some anarchists and Nazis. Before long, these few rotten eggs were giving the whole of surfing a bad name. Severson and his colleagues at Surfer Magazine set out to fix this.

A group of Los Angeles painters and sculptors represented by the famed Ferus Gallery (among them Billy Al Bengston, Ken Price and Robert Irwin) saw new opportunities for their own art in the space age plastics, resins and other polymers that surf culture—of which they were themselves a part of. Bengston famously created paintings that he actually polished, like a surfboard or motorcycle, to a state of impeccable shine.

These surf artists showed how surfing design could be transmuted into other spheres, and that the culture and attitude could inform any number of creative activities. Surf Art began around 1962 with the founding of Surfer magazine by John Severson. Rick Griffin started the comic Murphy. The comic, with its lovable main character, played a major role in getting surf culture back on track. The poster designer and comic book artist with a penchant for highly detailed illustration and a somewhat surrealist, warped aesthetic. His main character, Murphy, was a surfer whose interests became increasingly psychedelic as the 60s wore on.

Countless surf artists were influenced by Surfer magazine and Murphy, including John van Hamersveld, the artist known for the widely recognized Endless Summer painting. He had originally started a competing magazine, Surfing Illustrated, but closed up shop and joined Severson and company after being recruited by his idol Rick Griffin. While at Surfer, he met Bruce Brown who was filming Endless Summer and wanted an artist to design the film’s poster. It channels the crisp lines and saturated colours of modern surfboards themselves, while also figuring the duality of dark and light that characterizes the perspective of the social outsider.

Probably the most iconic surfing design of all time. But others have compellingly made the case for Rick Rietveld’s Surfer Einstein—a tongue-in-cheek reminder that while surfers have been stereotyped as burnouts, many of them are actually intellectuals in disguise.

Unlikely though it may have seemed at the time, Griffin is in many ways the father of present-day surf art. His detailed illustration style was carried on by future artists like Drew Brophy and Ben Brown, who has kept it current by adding psychedelic, punk and street art inflexions. The rest is history.