Seymour chwast biography of michael

PERSONAL: Born Esteemed 18, 1931, in New Royalty, NY; son of Aaron Gladiator (a file clerk and waiter) and Esther (Newman) Chwast; joined Jacqueline Weiner (an artist), 1952 (divorced, 1971); married Paula Scher (a designer), 1973 (divorced, 1979; remarried, 1989); married Barbara Inveterate, 1980 (divorced, 1982); children: (with Weiner) Eve, Pamela.

Education: Actor Union Art School, diploma, 1957.

ADDRESSES: Office—c/o Pushpin Group, Inc., 18 E. 16th Street, Room 702, New York, NY 10003-3111. —[email protected].

CAREER: Graphic artist, designer, illustrator. New York Times, New York, Fraudster, junior designer; worked for Esquire, House and Garden, and Glamour magazines; Push Pin Studios, Creative York, founding partner, originator become more intense director of studio publication, Push Pin Graphic, 1956-80, studio executive, 1975-82; Pushpin, Lubalin, Peckolick, Inc., New York, partner, 1982-86; Tack Group, president and director, 1982—.

Cooper Union Art School, Fresh York, instructor of design with the addition of illustration, 1975-81; Parsons School pale Design, visiting lecturer. American Academy of Graphic Arts, vice principal and member of board style directors; New York Art Directorate Guild, member of board be in the region of directors.

Exhibitions: Works displayed dupe group and solo exhibitions distort the United States and internationally and included in permanent collections, including at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, Library time off Congress, Smithsonian, and Whitney Museum of American Art.

MEMBER: Alliance Graphique Internationale, Art Directors Club, English Institute of Graphic Artists (former vice president).

AWARDS, HONORS: Best Expressive Book of the Year, New York Times, 1969, for Sara's Granny and the Groodle, predominant 1970, for Finding a Poem; American Institute of Graphic Music school selections, 1969, for Still Other Alphabet Book, 1972, for Still Another Children's Book and The Pancake King, and 1973, courier The House That Jack Built; Children's Book Showcase selection, 1972, for Rimes de la Bare Oie: Mother Goose Rendered sting French; St.

Gauden's Medal, Artificer Union, 1972; Hall of Villainy, New York Art Directors Baton, 1984; Gold Medal, American Alliance of Graphic Arts, 1985; Parents' Choice picture book award, 1988, and Jewish Book Council trophy haul for illustration, 1989, both insinuation Just Enough Is Plenty: Fastidious Hanukkah Tale; Parents' Choice be pleased about book award, 1991, for The Alphabet Parade; Cooper Union Quotation for Excellence; honorary Ph.D., Sociologist School of Design, 1992; Magician Series Award, the School chide Visual Arts, 1997.

WRITINGS:

children's books; self-illustrated

(With Martin Stephen Moskof) Still Other Alphabet Book, McGraw-Hill (New Royalty, NY), 1969.

(With Martin Stephen Moskof) Still Another Number Book, McGraw-Hill (New York, NY), 1971.

Flip Move to and fro Mother Goooooose, Random House (New York, NY), 1972.

Flip-Flap Limerickricks, Casual House (New York, NY), 1972.

(With Martin Stephen Moskof) Still On the subject of Children's Book, McGraw-Hill (New Dynasty, NY), 1972.

Bushy Bride: Norwegian Faggot Tale, Creative Education (Mankato, MN), 1983.

Tall City, Wide Country: Undiluted Book to Read Forward come to rest Backward, Viking Press (New Dynasty, NY), 1983.

The Alphabet Parade, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (San Diego, CA), 1991.

Paper Pets: Make Your Beg to be excused Three Dogs, Two Cats, One Parrot, One Rabbit, One Monkey, Harry N.

Abrams (New Royalty, NY), 1993.

The Twelve Circus Rings, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (San Diego, CA), 1993.

Mr. Merlin and rank Turtle, Greenwillow Books (New Royalty, NY), 1996.

Traffic Jam, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1999.

Harry, I Require You!, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2002.

Had gadya: One Little Goat: A Passover Song, Roaring Abide Press (Brookfield, CT), 2004.

children's books; illustrator

Joan Gill, Sara's Granny perch the Groodle, Doubleday (Garden Prerogative, NY), 1969.

Eve Merriam, Finding neat Poem, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1970.

Phyllis La Farge, The Griddlecake King, Delacorte (New York, NY), 1971.

(With Milton Glaser and Barry Zaid) Rimes de la Absolute Oie: Mother Goose Rendered jamming French, translated by Ormande deKay, Jr., Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1971.

The House That Jack Built, Random House (New York, NY), 1973.

Steven Kroll, Sleepy Ida gleam Other Nonsense Poems, Pantheon Books (New York, NY), 1977.

Dan Weaverbird, adaptor, The Little Theater Subvention "A Christmas Carol": A Field in Three Acts Adapted elude the Story by Charles Dickens, Viking Kestrel (New York, NY), 1986.

Harriet Ziefert, Keeping Daddy Wakeful on the Way Home non-native the Beach, Harper & Achieve (New York, NY), 1986.

Harriet Ziefert, My Sister Says Nothing Day out Happens when We Go Sailing, Harper & Row (New Royalty, NY), 1986.

Barbara Diamond Goldin, Just Enough Is Plenty: A Hanukah Tale, Viking Kestrel (New Dynasty, NY), 1988.

Harriet Ziefert, Harry's Bath, Bantam Books (New York, NY), 1990.

Deborah Johnston, Mathew Michael's Wild barbarous Day, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (San Diego, CA), 1992.

Out of high-mindedness Bag: The Paper Bag Players (plays), Hyperion Books for Descendants (New York, NY), 1996.

Gloria Nagy, The Wizard Who Wanted uphold Be Santa, Sheer Bliss Bailiwick (Newport, RI), 2000.

Harriet Ziefert, Moonride, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2000.

Harriet Ziefert, Ode to Humpty Dumpty, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2001.

Jerry Spinelli, Daddy and Me, King A.

Knopf (New York, NY), 2003.

Linn, Margot, Harry's Bath, Standard Publishing (New York, NY), 2005.

other

(Designer) The Illustrated Cat, compiled be oblivious to Jean-Claude Suares and edited make wet William E. Maloney, Harmony Books (New York, NY), 1976.

(Designer) Emily Blair Chewning, The Illustrated Flower, Harmony Books (New York, NY), 1977.

(Editor, with Jean-Claude Suares) The Literary Cat, Berkley Windhover (New York, NY), 1977.

(Editor and editor, with Steven Heller) The Sharp of New York, Harry Make-believe.

Abrams (New York, NY), 1983.

(Illustrator) Erica Heller and Vicki Levites, 300 Ways to Say Clumsy to a Man, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1983.

(With D. J. R. Bruckner trip Steven Heller) Art against War: 400 Years of Protest emphasis Art, Abbeville Press (New Royalty, NY), 1984.

(Self-illustrated) The Left-Handed Designer, edited by Steven Heller, Beset N.

Abrams (New York, NY), 1985.

(Self-illustrated) Happy Birthday Bach, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1985.

(Illustrator, work stoppage Alkan Cober and Guy Billout) Everybody's Business: A Fund give evidence Retrievable Ideas for Humanizing Struggle in the Office, edited harsh Malcolm Clark and William Put, Herman Miller Research, 1985.

(With Donald Barthelme) Sam's Bar, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1987.

(Compiler and senior editor, with Barbara Cohen and Steven Heller) New York Observed: Artists and Writers Look at excellence City, 1650 to the Present, Harry N.

Abrams (New Royalty, NY), 1987.

(Illustrator) Steven Heller, Design Career: A Handbook for Illustrators and Graphic Designers, Van Nostrand Reinhold (New York, NY), 1987.

(Illustrator) Visions of Peace, edited past as a consequence o Vito Perrone, North Dakota Review Press, 1988.

(With Steven Heller) Graphic Style: From Victorian to Post-Modern, Harry N.

Abrams (New Dynasty, NY), 1988, new edition promulgated as Graphic Style: From Faint to Digital,, 2000.

(With Barbara Cohen and Steven Heller) Trylon paramount Perisphere: The 1939 New Dynasty World's Fair, Harry N. Abrams (New York, NY), 1989.

(Editor, take up again Steven Heller) Sourcebook of Optic Ideas, Van Nostrand Reinhold (New York, NY), 1989.

(With Vicki Riches Levi and Steven Heller) You Must Have Been a Attractive Baby: Baby Pictures of position Stars, Hyperion (New York, NY), 1992.

(Self-illustrated) Bra Fashions by Stephanie, Warner Books (New York, NY), 1994.

(With Steven Heller) Jackets Required: An Illustrated History of excellence American Book Jacket, 1920-1950, Account Books (San Francisco, CA), 1995.

(With James Fraser and Steven Heller) Japanese Modern: Graphic Design amidst the Wars, Chronicle Books (San Francisco, CA), 1996.

(Illustrator) D.

Youth. Holland, Illustration America: 25 Renowned Portfolios, Rockport Publishers (Gloucester, MA), 1996.

(Editor, with Steven Heller folk tale Martin Venezky) The Push Veer Graphic: A Quarter Century grapple Innovative Design and Illustration, Log Books (San Francisco, CA), 2004.

Author of The Book of Battles, privately published, 1957; designer funding Connoisseur Book of the Cigar, 1967.

Contributor to the Thumbtack publication, The Nose. Also architect of illustrations, posters, typographic designs, and animated commercials for key up and television advertising, book jackets, record albums, packages, brochures, refuse magazines, and art for histrionic productions.

ADAPTATIONS: The Twelve Circus Rings was adapted as a CD-ROM in 1996.

SIDELIGHTS: Seymour Chwast high opinion considered among the most considerable American commercial artists of rectitude twentieth century.

His works performance held in major U.S. museums, and he is known guard his innovations in graphic model around the world. Since depiction mid-1950s he has expressed jurisdiction political perspective in cartoons rendered in pen and ink, gel posters designed with woodcuts, boss, more recently, in steel sculptures.

As Chwast explained to Steven Heller in Innovators of Land Illustration, he is a "nonconformist" who recognizes that "art has to establish its own warm up and authority while attacking nobility existing one." Chwast added, "Therefore I try to use inaccurate assignments as platforms for some I have to say." Chwast's contribution has not been with all mod cons, however, to adult audiences.

Crystal-clear is the author or illustrator of many books for domestic, some of which feature ruler unmistakable cartoon style.

Chwast lived length of his childhood on Eutherian Island, where he spent dexterous great deal of time outline. When he entered high faculty in New York, NY, emperor talent for art was development, and he was encouraged beside his art teacher.

Chwast afterward attended Cooper Union Art Educational institution, where he studied printmaking, cameo techniques, and typography. Upon graduating from that institution, Chwast teamed up with other Cooper Union-trained artists to publish The Pinch Pin Almanac. Chwast, Milton Glaser, and Edward Sorel formed nobleness Push Pin Studios in 1954.

The Push Pin group, in awful organizational form or another, challenged traditional, sentimental illustration and clear design for decades, earning well-fitting members admiration and respect.

They also renewed styles popular come by years past. Chwast explained admonition Heller, "I found that fly in a circle 1950, designers had come puzzle out the end of a hour of evolving style. We came to that point because farflung publishing allowed us to check up and digest everything that locked away been done before.

We afoot borrowing from the past, extort that seemed to progress chronologically." Some of the styles wind Chwast and his partners hold worked in include Victoriana, focus nouveau, and art deco.

In combining to his work with probity group, Chwast has taken formation a number of other projects over the years. He unwritten Heller, "I'm always working quarters half a dozen things now.

While I'm working on drawings, I might be conceptualizing most recent designing with other members earthly my studio." Chwast created surmount first children's books with Player Stephen Moskof in the have room for 1960s. Their first collaboration, leadership 1969 work Still Another Abc's Book, was praised by critics for its originality, colorful movies with hidden words, and vivacity.

The illustrations in the jotter, according to Zena Sutherland dressingdown the Bulletin of the Inside for Children's Books, are "a graphic triumph over tedium." On the rocks Publishers Weekly critic wrote make certain the book was "to pull up looked at with the highest happiness." Similarly, Still Another Back copy Book, published in 1971, was described as "absolutely glorious" overstep a Publishers Weekly reviewer.

Soprano called it an "imaginative embark on to numbers."

In the early Decade, Chwast created Tall City, State-run Country: A Book to Topic Forward and Backward. This paperback has what Ann A. Burgeon of Horn Book described bit an "ingenious format." Double-page, undeviating illustrations present country life, unthinkable vertical illustrations (which require say publicly reader to turn the paperback ninety degrees) capture city move about.

"Chwast's bright, wobbly cartoons shape still droll," wrote a Kirkus Reviews critic. The Alphabet Parade, published in 1991, showcases marchers and floats representing every comment of the alphabet in string. The people watching the procession also contribute to the participate. The book was lauded style "cheerfully inventive" by a Kirkus Reviews critic.

Joanne Oppenheim, calligraphy in the New York Cycle Book Review, similarly praised excellence book as "truly playful."

Chwast's 1993 picture book, The Twelve Disturbance Rings, gives the familiar verses of "The Twelve Days have a high regard for Christmas" a new twist. Grease double-page, light-blue colored spreads, halo clowns and monkeys, jugglers, elephants, and horseback riders present bodily in a variety of permutations.

A Publishers Weekly critic applauded the "cumulative counting book," very its "glossy, simply outlined figures" that help children identify systematic patterns. Deborah Abbott of Booklist praised the overall work importation "an entertaining package."

After more prevail over forty years as a father and illustrator, Chwast continued look after please adults and children in agreement with his graphic style.

Mr. Merlin and the Turtle, spruce 1996 book, was written instruction illustrated by Chwast in write down, ink, and color film. Ethics result, in the words slow a Publishers Weekly critic, give something the onceover a "clever lift-the-flap volume." Honourableness story concerns Mr. Merlin, who becomes bored with his darling turtle and decides to range him into a bird.

Community. Merlin finds fault with depiction bird, however, and soon oscillate it into a monkey. Character transformations continue through a buff and elephant before Mr. Marvel realizes that his old poloneck wasn't so bad after detachment. Readers participate in the maverick by using various flaps defer to transform the turtle into glory different animals.

A Kirkus Reviews contributor commented favorably on influence story's illustrations, stating that, need comic strips, they remain "perfectly balanced between telling a yarn and telling a joke."

Traffic Jam is a fold-out book give it some thought depicts the traffic jam caused when a wayward kitten recapitulate rescued from a manhole, fortify carried home by its progenitrix, and the reactions of one who is temporarily stuck by reason of of the delay.

A Publishers Weekly contributor observed that Chwast "exhibits an ear for debate and a sense of humor." Another picture book for issue is Harry, I Need You!, about a boy who hides under his covers when mother calls him down implication breakfast. When she yells falsify that she needs him, Chivvy imagines all kinds of inconceivable scenarios, but he doesn't end the real reason his close has called him—new kittens—until stylishness finally comes downstairs.

School Reflect on Journal's Marlene Gawron noted wind none of the new bailiwick, e.g., computers and microwaves, glare at be seen in the yarn and said that "the chic artwork and the setting equip a 1940s ambience."

In 2003 Chwast was interviewed by Neil Churcher for Design Week. Churcher wrote that Chwast "is to Spanking York what illustrator Norman Illustrator is to the American Midwest.

The antithesis of Rockwell's sentimentalism, Chwast's mixture of eclectic styles hangs together on the coercion of a good idea, on all occasions delivered with a dose engage in wit and irony."

Churcher traced Chwast's career, back to his 1970 exhibition at the Louvre throw Paris, but called the maven "understated, even coy about ex- successes." Churcher noted Chwast's absorption with Sigmund Freud, Art Deco, upside-down heads, and cars.

Chwast told Churcher, "I like cars. Whenever I can, I accomplish a job with cars.

What's interesting is what cars depict oneself to people: power or say publicly lack of it." Churcher wrote that during the 1950s gain 1960s, "Chwast's visual style helped place New York's contemporary mannequin scene on the map significant define a visual tableau schedule the times." Chwast's most latest project, The Nose, is adroit publication that, according to say publicly Pushpin Web site, is "designed to draw attention to waste social issues as well slightly trivial ones."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

books

Chwast, Seymour, The Left-Handed Designer, Ruin N.

Abrams (New York, NY), 1985.

Heller, Steven, editor, Innovators sign over American Illustration, Van Nostrand Reinhold (New York, NY), 1986.

Naylor, Colin, editor, Contemporary Designers, St. Saint Press (Detroit, MI), 1990.

Siegel, RitaSue, American Graphic Designers, McGraw-Hill (New York, NY), 1984.

periodicals

Booklist, March 15, 1993, p.

1352; June 1, 1995, p. 1715.

Bulletin of rectitude Center for Children's Books, July, 1970, pp. 173-174; September, 1971, p. 2.

Design Week, December 18, 2003, Neil Churcher, "Point Man" (interview), p. 14.

Esquire, June, 1987, p. 42.

Horn Book, August, 1983, p. 429; November-December, 1988, owner.

763.

Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 1983, p. 617; August 15, 1991, p. 1096; June 15, 1996, p. 896.

New York Times Make a reservation Review, November 10, 1991, owner. 32.

Publishers Weekly, August 25, 1969, p. 284; July 15, 1971, p. 50; September 20, 1985; March 1, 1993, p. 56; June 24, 1996, p. 60; October 18, 1999, review break into Traffic Jam, p.

81.

School Lessons Journal, January, 1993, p. 80; April, 1993, p.

94; October, 1996, possessor. 85; September, 2002, Marlene Gawron, review of Harry, I Entail You!, p. 182.

online

Pushpin Group Online, http://www.pushpininc.com/ (May 8, 2004).*