Ritz-Carlton Magazine - Fall 2011 - (Page 144)

h e R i Ta g e jerry garcia T h e R i T z - C a R lT o n , n e w y o R k , s p R i n g 1 9 9 2 Before he was the lead guitar player in the Grateful Dead, the legendary psychedelic rock band, Jerry Garcia was a promising student at the San Francisco Art Institute. It was a serious car accident at the age of 19, he later recalled, that changed his path and led him to give up his ambition of becoming a painter to continue in his father’s footsteps as a professional musician. The Grateful Dead was born of San Francisco’s hippie counterculture, which the band both outlasted and kept alive for three decades, in a career quite unlike any other. Always a reluctant rock star, Garcia continued to draw and paint as a respite from the pressures and boredom of long concert tours — he traveled with a suitcase full of paints, sketchbooks and Japanese calligraphy brushes. He often claimed to hear music as colors, and his paintings are themselves vividly musical compositions, drawing on Fauvism, comic art and Surrealism. His most productive period was in the 10 years before his death in 1995, when the therapeutic benefits of making art helped assuage the ill health he was suffering. When in New York, he liked to stay up to watch the dawn rising over Central Park, and the watercolor atop this page was painted in his hotel room at The Ritz-Carlton one spring morning. Garcia’s habit was to give most of his paintings away, just as he encouraged fans to make their own recordings of his concerts. But this one endured and is still produced as a lithograph, in addition to being available as a colorful print on a necktie — an unusual memorial to a man who never wore one. 144 w w w. r i t z c a r lt o n . c o m From Top: “Dawn aT The riTz” by Jerry Garcia, (c) 2011 Jerry Garcia Family llc.; Time & liFe picTures/GeTTy imaGes http://WWW.RITZCARLTON.COM

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Ritz-Carlton Magazine - Fall 2011

Ritz-Carlton Magazine - Fall 2011
Contents
Contributors
Editor's Letter
Falling in Love with... Toronto
Design
Technology
On the Boulevards
Art
Jewelry
Watches
Wellness
Golf
Beijing
Shanghai
Culinary
The Guide
Heritage

Ritz-Carlton Magazine - Fall 2011