Seymour Chwast

In my last blog about Tadanori Yokoo, the Japanese graphic designer and illustrator, I mentioned that one of his quoted influences was the work of Push Pin Studios in New York, particularly that of Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwaste. Over the next couple of blogs I will show a thread of connections through the work of certain illustrators.

Seymour Chwast was born in Bronx, New York on 18 August 1931 and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Cooper Union art school in 1951. With Milton Glaser and Edward Sorel, he founded Push Pin Studios in 1954. The bi-monthly publication The Push Pin Graphic was a product of their collaboration.

These illustrations, typical of Chwaste's work will remind you of the Beatle's cartoon Yellow Submarine, which was in fact drawn by another illustrator, the German Heinz Edelmann.

Chwast is famous for his commercial artwork, which includes posters, food packaging, magazine covers, and publicity art. Often referred to as "the left-handed designer," Chwast's unique graphic design melded social commentary and a distinctive style of illustration. Today, he continues to work and is principal at The Pushpin Group in New York City.

Tadanori Yokoo

Tadanori Yokoo (横尾忠則, Yokoo Tadanori) born 1936 in Hyogo, is a Japanese graphic designer, illustrator, printmaker and painter.

Yokoo (pronounced "yoko-o") is one of Japan's most successful and internationally recognized graphic designers and artists. He began his career as a stage designer for avant garde theatre in Tokyo. His early work shows the influence of the New York based Push Pin Studio (Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast in particular) but Yokoo himself cites filmmaker Akira Kurosawa and writer Yukio Mishima as two of his most formative influences.

In the late 1960s he became interested in mysticism and psychedelia, deepened by travels in India. Because his work was so attuned to 1960s pop culture, he has often been (unfairly) described as the "Japanese Andy Warhol" or likened to psychedelic poster artist Peter Max, but Yokoo's complex and multi-layered imagery is intensely autobiographical and entirely original.

By the late 60s he had already achieved international recognition for his work and was included in the 1968 "Word & Image" exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Four years later MoMA mounted a solo exhibition of his graphic work organized by Mildred Constantine. Yokoo collaborated extensively with Shuji Terayama and his theater Tenjo Sajiki. He has also starred as a protagonist in Nagisa Oshima's film Diary of a Shinjuku Thief.

In 1981 he unexpectedly "retired" from commercial work and took up painting. His career as a fine artist continues to this day with numerous exhibitions of his paintings every year, but alongside this he remains fully engaged and prolific as a graphic designer.

 

Gerrit Rietveld

In the fourth posting on the theme of architect/designer I am looking at Gerrit Rietveld (24 June 1888–26 June 1964) who was a Dutch furniture designer and architect. One of the principal members of the Dutch artistic movement called De Stijl, Rietveld is famous for his Red and Blue Chair and for the Rietveld Schröder House, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Rietveld designed his famous Red and Blue Chair in 1917. In 1918, he started his own furniture factory, and changed the chair's colors after becoming influenced by the 'De Stijl' movement, of which he became a member in 1919, the same year in which he became an architect.

Red and Blue Chair (1917)

He designed his first building, the Rietveld Schröder House, in 1924, in close collaboration with the owner Truus Schröder-Schräder. Built in Utrecht on the Prins Hendriklaan 50, the house has a conventional ground floor, but is radical on the top floor, lacking fixed walls but instead relying on sliding walls to create and change living spaces. The design seems like a three-dimensional realization of a Mondrian painting.

The Rietveld Schröder House. 

Note how similar in style the above detail looks to his Berlin Chair (1923)

Rietveld broke with the 'De Stijl' in 1928 and became associated with a more functionalist style of architecture known as either Nieuwe Zakelijkheid or Nieuwe Bouwen. The same year he joined the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne. He designed the "Zig-Zag" chair in 1934 and started the design of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which was finished after his death. He built hundreds of homes, many of which are in the city of Utrecht.

Zig-Zag Chair (1934)

His work was neglected when rationalism came into vogue but he later benefited from a revival of the style of the 1920s thirty years later.

 Dining Chair (1919)

Steel Chair (1927)

Steltman Chair (1963)