DELAWARE EXHIBTION: MILTON GLASER

This is one of a series of posts on the artists featured in the upcoming exhibition at the Delaware Art Museum,  State of the Art: Illustration 100 Years After Howard Pyle. 
Prior to the 1950s, illustration was dominated by artists who visualized narrative passages from a text, employing fairly realistic styles.  But by the 1950s, that approach was running out of steam.  Traditional illustration was being battered by the rise of photography.  Fiction magazines which had been the prime market for illustration ever since Howard Pyle's day began losing circulation.  Advertising revenues were shifting to television.  In this challenging environment, a new form of illustration emerged.


In 1954, Milton Glaser co-founded the revolutionary Push Pin Studios, a graphic design and illustration firm which had a significant impact on the path of 20th century design.   In this and several other influential positions, Glaser employed graphic symbols and visual metaphors to convey ideas, choosing freely from a wide array of styles and techniques.  He observed, "It's absurd to be loyal to a style."

No artist has been more eloquent than Glaser  in articulating the merger of conceptual design and illustration. It would be difficult to overstate his importance to the field.  He has been the subject of one man shows at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Pompidou Center in Paris.


I've enjoyed making unkind remarks on this blog about "conceptual" artists who cannot draw and who have no sense of design or composition but who have become emboldened by the excuse that such factors are less relevant today.  The focus of art has shifted, we are told, from visual appearance to intellectual content, making the technical skills of yesterday obsolete.  These artists would do well to study the work of Glaser.  For all that he did to expand the role of concepts in design and move beyond Norman Rockwell's brand of realism, Glaser has never lost sight of the importance of embodying his concepts in beautiful and relevant forms.

These are ample reasons for including Glaser in the centennial exhibition at the Delaware Art Museum, but I would add on a personal note that I especially enjoy the humor and whimsy that Glaser's work has exhibited over his long and prestigious career.  Like his fellow New Yorker Saul Steinberg, Glaser (who has been described as an "intellectual designer-illustrator") manages to handle the most profound philosophical concepts with playfulness and simplicity-- a sure sign that he is on the right track.


These and other original works by Glaser will be on display at the exhibition.

Popular posts from this blog

THE SKETCHBOOKS OF ALBERT DORNE

Image
Albert Dorne was one of the most remarkable characters in the history of illustration.  The upcoming book,   Albert Dorne, Master Illustrator  (out in November from the fine folks at Auad Publishing) describes how Dorne used his drawing ability to climb from the depths of poverty and illness to international renown as an artist, business leader, educator and philanthropist. Detail   From the introduction to the new book:      Starting with nothing but a talent for drawing, Dorne became (in the words of advertising titan Fairfax Cone) “the highest paid, most successful commercial artist of his time.”   From that position,   he used his drawing skills as a platform for building a multinational corporation that trained tens of thousands of students around the world in the creative fields of art, writing and photography.   Now a wealthy man, he went on to use drawing to help the disabled, became nationally respected for his charitable work a...
Read more

ERICH SOKOL

Image
John Ciardi once said, “Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves they have a better idea.” Since we've been rambling for the last few weeks about modern art trends, I thinks it makes sense to heed Ciardi's advice and spend a moment visiting the paintings of Erich Sokol, the gifted illustrator / cartoonist for Playboy magazine. Sokol had a splendid sense of light, color and atmosphere. He was far more talented than traditional pin up artists such as Vargas, whose uninspired paintings now sell for tens of thousands of dollars. Note the confidence with which Sokol handles the stripes of light on the beach in the following painting, or his treatment of the foliage in the background. Nothing is labored, and no unnecessary details. Although the beautiful girl was always the centerpiece of the cartoon, if you look closely you will see that Sokol had more fun painting the male counterpart-- the fat doctor, the grizzled farmer, the blusterin...
Read more

FIRST CONTACT

Image
. Every once in a while we do a post on science fiction stories here. For me the genre is just endlessly interesting thanks to remarkable storytellers who break new ground with each advancement in technology, biology, evolutionary psychology, etc. If you add into the mix recent discoveries of planets potentially capable of harboring life in other solar systems, suddenly novels of "first contact" have intriguing new playgrounds. A recent novel I haven't been able to stop thinking about is Blindsight by Peter Watts . It in part explores the questions: If an extrasolar intelligence arrived, would it even be possible for us to parse a completely alien psychology? And how would we react if it seemed to refuse contact or took no notice of our attempts to do so? We have a poor track record in dealing with things we don't understand and that frighten us, and Blindsight is a frightening novel. It has a kind of Richard Dawkins fueled bleakness that makes the story compelli...
Read more