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The Origin of Surf Art

Surf Art began around 1962 with the founding of Surfer magazine by John Severson.

Published in

Art|Story

4 min readSep 3, 2017

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 sequal — 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.

One of Severson’s colleagues, Rick Griffin, started the comic Murphy. The comic, with it’s lovable main character, played a major role in getting surf culture back on track. 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. The rest is history.