Pushing the Pen and the Push Pin Duet of Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast

As photographic technology and the market for this product and its use matured in the 40’s and 50’s, four men of different backgrounds whom attended Cooper Union, a free and liberal college in their era that did not discriminate against race sex or religion, lived together while at Cooper Union. I believe this exposure and their assemblage led to their prolific careers. The four art students whom founded Push Pin Studio a few years after their graduation were: Seymour Chwast, Milton Glaser, Reynolds Ruffins, and Edward Sorel. Ruffins a black student was to become a prominent artist, illustrator and graphic designer. A son of Jewish immigrants, Sorel grew up in the Bronx and attended the High School for Music and Art with Ruffins – Sorel would become a cartoonist and famed political satirist.  Both Sorel and Ruffin along with Chwast formed a magazine called Push Pin Almanack while they plied their new approach to graphic design in the early 1950’s. After graduation Glaser received an eye-opening Fullbright Scholarship to study in Italy with Giorgio Morandi at the Accademia di Belle Arti. Glaser study etching and art.

When Glaser returned to New York the four men formed Push Pin Studio. After a while Chwast and Glaser were only left at Push Pin Studios whom continued work in graphic design and influencing graphic design in the US and Europe. The style they developed was based on total communication or holistic approach to graphic design combing image and design layout. They pooh-poohed the iconastic approach of International Typographic Style and thought and designed outside the lines and applied various styles from other forms, like art nouveau, wood block and font styles in a nonlinear and structured format.

A few examples by Glaser present to discuss are his famous Bob Dylan poster which was included in over 6 million albums. This poster combined a black silhouette of Dylan in black outline similar to the Victorian art called silhouette, with a wavy concept of Dylan’s massive curly hair in an art deco stylized curly and vibrant-colored coif (see Fig 21-19)¹.  A second example is Glaser’s poster titled, Art is … WHATEVER. The cover conveys a blend of shadowed silhouette to convey perception and a similar black bolo hat and graphic font very plainly to see in black and red color there two form a “face or head” but without a human face to express conceptuality.  This is very intellectual graphic design that blends image and content.  He makes the viewer think about the balance between perception and conception. ²

I liked Glaser art for Poppy Records. This business poster or drawing illustrated the company as it developed a need to break from it competition.  Its shows a concrete block with a Poppy ring out of it. The combination of surrealism and geometric shape is effective in concept to show a break from conformity is illustrated in this poster called, FROM POPPY WITH LOVE ⁽³⁾.

An example from Chwast combined art and image and history along with the political statement of the bombing of Hanoi in North Vietnam in his poster of Uncle Sam eating planes bombs and homes  - in his mouth. The poster done in a similar art deco style with a more cartoonish Uncle Sam in three colors: of purple, green and orange. The poster caption simply states: End Bad Breath.⁴  Chwast work was also used in music and entertainment industry. Two posters of Chwast are his Lincoln Center Philharmonic Hall Poster depicting Judy Garland ⁵ and the album cover for The Threepenny Opera ⁶

In both of these artistic materials, Chwast combined free-form shape to symbolize the person, breaking form the illustrative forms to more surrealistic drawing of the person, with vibrant shape. The Judy Garland poster exudes a warmth and coolness of the singer, whereas the album cover for the German play The Threepenny Opera is equally enticing wth a smiling woman and disheveled hair similar to the Dylan coif with a man in pinned striped suit sitting on the woman shoulder. The cover has woodblock imagery to its structure along with a varied typographic font, similar the styles used in the Industrial Age where posters virtually yelled at the reader with its varied fonts sizes and typographic formats. Chwast brilliantly designed through the concept a unity of varied graphic design techniques and methods.

Here are the three referenced works by Glaser. Dylan, followed by Art is...WHATEVER, and then the poster on Poppy Records,

 

 

 

 

 Here below are three examples of Chwast's work: The poster to end the bombing of Hanoi, and two works associated with entertainment, the Judy Garland Poster for Lincoln Hall and the album cover for the German Threepenny Opera play.

 

(1)  Figure 21-19. Milton Glaser Bob Dylan poster, 1967, Megg’s History of Graphic Design, p.442. Copyright 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved

(2)  Figure 21-22. Milton Glaser, Art is…Whatever poster, 1996, Megg’s History of Graphic Design, p.443. Copyright 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved

(3)  Figure 21-21. Milton Glaser, Poppy Records, FROM POPPY WITH LOVE poster, 1968, Megg’s History of Graphic Design, p.442. Copyright 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved

(4)  Figure 21-26. Seymour Chwast, Protest Bombing of Hanoi poster, 1968, Megg;s History of Graphic Design, p.444. Copyright 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved

(5)  Figure 21-23. Seymour Chwast, Judy Garland at the Lincoln Center poster, 1960, Megg;s History of Graphic Design, p.443. Copyright 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved

(6)  Figure 21-24. Seymour Chwast, The Threepenny Opera album cover, 1975, Megg;s History of Graphic Design, p.443. Copyright 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved