Milton Glaser

About a hundred years ago, the first time I went to New York, I was invited along to Push Pin Studios by the English illustrator Barry Zaid who had recently been recruited. I was lucky enough to meet co-founder Seymour Chwaste while I was there but disappointingly, Milton Glaser the other founder, incredibly talented designer, illustrator and typographer - and now very famous for creating the I [heart] NY logo, was away at the time, though I did get to have a drink with him in London in the 70’s when he interviewed Pauline (her indoors) about a work project.

In 1954 Glaser was a founder, and president, of Push Pin Studios formed with several of his Cooper Union classmates. Glaser's work is characterized by directness, simplicity and originality. He uses any medium or style to solve the problem at hand. His style ranges wildly from primitive to avante garde in his countless book jackets, album covers, advertisements and direct mail pieces and magazine illustrations. He started his own studio, Milton Glaser, Inc, in 1974. This led to his involvement with an increasingly wide diversity of projects, ranging from the design of New York Magazine, of which he was a co-founder, to a 600 foot mural for the Federal Office Building in Indianapolis.

Throughout his career he has had a major impact on contemporary illustration and design. His work has won numerous awards from Art Directors Clubs, the American Institute of Graphic Arts, the Society of Illustrators and the Type Directors Club. In 1979 he was made Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and his work is included in the Museum of Modern Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Israel Museum and the Musee de L'affiche in Paris. Glaser has taught at both the School of Visual Arts and at Cooper Union in New York City. He is a member of Alliance Graphique International (AGI).
In 2009, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama.

I'm off to Italy tomorrow, and not taking the computer, so this is the last post for a week or so...

Howard Hodgkin

Howard Hodgkin (born 6 August 1932), another painter who I would classify as a colourist produces lively abstracts. He has been called Howard Splodgkin, but come to think of it that may have been by me. Hodgkin is a cousin of the English still life painter Eliot Hodgkin (1905-87), and was educated at Bryanston School in Dorset. He then studied at the Camberwell Art School and later at the Bath Academy of Art in Corsham, where Edward Piper studied drawing under him.

Hodgkin's first solo show was in London in 1962. His early paintings tend to be made up of hard-edged curved forms in a limited number of colours.
Around the beginning of the 1970s, his style became more spontaneous, with vaguely recognisable shapes presented in bright colours and bold forms. His works may then be called "semi-abstract", and are often compared to the paintings of Henri Matisse.

In 1984, Hodgkin represented Britain at the Venice Biennale, in 1985 he won the Turner Prize, and in 1992 he was knighted. In 1995, Hodgkin printed the Venetian Views series, which depict the same view of Venice at four different times of day. Venice, Afternoon - one of the four prints - uses sixteen sheets, or fragments, in a hugely complex printing process which creates a colourful, painterly effect. This piece was given to the Yale Centre of British Art in June 2006 by the Israel family to complement their already-impressive collection of Hodgkins.

In 2003 he was appointed by Queen Elizabeth II as a Companion of Honour. A major exhibition of his work was mounted at Tate Britain, London, in 2006. Also in 2006, The Independent declared him one of the 100 most influential gay people in Britain, as his work helps many people express their emotions to others.

Jamie Wyeth

In the last of three posts on the American family of painters, the Wyeths, I am featuring the work of Andrew Wyeth, son of the more famous Andrew Wyeth and grandson of the famous illustrator & artist N. C. Wyeth. His work is very much in the same tradition and palette as that of his father.
James Browning Wyeth (born July 6, 1946) is a contemporary American realist painter. He was born in Chadds Ford Township, Pennsylvania, He is artistic heir to the Brandywine School Tradition, painters who worked in the rural Brandywine River area of Delaware and Pennsylvania, portraying its people, animals, and landscape.

Andrew Wyeth

In my second post about the American artist dynasty of the Wyeth family I am featuring the best known, Andrew Wyeth. In my last post I looked at the illustration work of his father, N. C. Wyeth. Andrew Wyeth (1917 – 2009) is best known for his detailed tempera paintings of people in the north-eastern landscape around his hometown of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and at his summer home in Cushing, Maine. I actually prefer the freshness and immediacy of his watercolours. These are big, bold watercolours done as ever in a muted palette. I first came across them at the Lefevre Gallery in London in the 1970's.
Andrew Wyeth was primarily a realist painter, working predominantly in a regionalist style. He was one of the best-known American artists of the middle 20th century, and was sometimes referred to as the "Painter of the People," due to his work's popularity with the American public.

N. C. Wyeth

A lot of people will be familiar with the works of Andrew Wyeth, the famous American Painter best known for his detailed realistic portraits of the people and the land around the north-eastern States. Possibly what is less known, at least here in England is that the Wyeth family is a small dynasty of painters, Andrew being the best known. His father N. C. Wyeth was a well known artist and illustrator of derring-do childrens books. Andrew's  son Jamie Wyeth has followed in his father's footsteps. I'll feature the work of all three here, starting with N. C Wyeth.
Newell Convers Wyeth (1882 –1945) was the star pupil of artist the Howard Pyle and became one of America's greatest illustrators. During his lifetime, Wyeth created over 3,000 paintings and illustrated 112 books, 25 of them for Scribner's, which is the work for which he is best known.
Wyeth was a realist painter just as the camera and photography began to compete with his craft. Sometimes seen as melodramatic, his illustrations were designed to be understood quickly. Wyeth, who was both a painter and an illustrator, understood the difference, and said in 1908, "Painting and illustration cannot be mixed—one cannot merge from one into the other."