From ‘Getting It Straight in Notting Hill Gate’ (1970) by Joe Gannon, featuring pop/op-art artist Larry Smart and footage of the famous Portobello Road street market. The title comes from the Quintessence song ‘Notting Hill Gate‘ (“We’re getting it straight in Notting Hill Gate / We all sit around and meditate..”).
Smart is best known for his psychedelic portraits of music legends like Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon. He was influenced by Islamic geometry from his childhood in Baghdad. In the period shown here he was trading his mandala paintings for food at a local Indian vegetarian restaurant.
Soon after this he spent spent a year living at George Harrison’s 120-room Friar Park mansion, painting murals and a trompe l’oeil (art technique that uses realistic imagery to create the illusion of three-dimensional depth). Later in the mid ’70s he designed the Atomhenge set for Hawkwind, and in the ’90s he designed packaging for Whole Earth Foods.
