Chapter 21

Question 1

Concept

Answer 1

a general idea formed by specific instances

Question 2

motif

Answer 2

a recurrent thematic element in art or literature

Question 3

metaphysical

Answer 3

without material form or substance; abstract or theoretical

Question 4

narrative illustration

Answer 4

a literal style of depiction that tells a story overtly

Question 5

Push Pin Almanack

Answer 5

bi-monthly magazine begun in the 1950s by Seymour Chwast, Milton Glaser, Reynolds Ruffin, and Edward Sorel, a group of young New York graphic artists who used the joint publication to solicit freelance work. Originally, the publication featured editorial material from old almanacs, which the group illustrated

Question 6

Push Pin Studio

Answer 6

Formed in August 1954 by Seymour Chwast, Milton Glaser, Reynolds Ruffin, and Edward Sorel. After Ruffins and Sorel left to pursue other interests, Glaser and Chwast continued their partnership for two decades; then Glaser left and Chwast provided a forum for presenting new ideas, imagery, and techniques

Question 7

iconography

Answer 7

the specified traditional symbols that are associated with the subject or theme of a stylized work of art

Question 8

Push Pin style

Answer 8

term that became widely used throughout the world to refer to the studio’s work and its broad influence

Question 9

Print magazine

Answer 9

an American graphic design periodical founded in 1940 that instituted a regional design annual in 1981, reflecting the national scope of the graphic design discipline

Question 10

psychedelic posters

Answer 10

Posters from the late 1960s hippie subculture, which centered in the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco, were referred to as psychedelic posters because they there related to anti-establishment values, rock music, and psychedelic drugs

Question 11

Twen

Answer 11

A German periodical of the graphic poet movement launched in 1959, its name is derived from the English word twenty, which signified the age group of the magazine’s audience

Question 12

Grapus

Answer 12

a design studio begun by three young Parisian graphic designers, Pierre Bernhard, Francios Miehe, and Gerard Paris-Clavel, who were deeply involved in the radical politics of the day. They believed publicity and design were directed toward creating artificial demands in order to maximize profits, so they joined forces to turn their graphic design toward political, social, and cultural, rather than commercial, ends. The starting point of Grapus’s problem solving was analysis and discussion about content and message. The most significant aspects of the problem and the kernal of the message were determined, and then a graphic expression of the essence of the content was sought

Question 13

third-world poster

Answer 13

a powerful vehicle for spreading social and political ideas among emerging nations in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. These are either used to motivate people in their native lands toward one side of an issue, or distributed to people in Western countries who feel strongly about international issues

Question 14

Armando Testa

Answer 14

• 1917-92
• an Italian abstract painter turned graphic designer who used metaphysical combinations to convey elemental truths about his subjects. In his wide-reaching ads for Pirelli tires, he borrowed the vocabulary of surrealism by combining the image of a tire with immediately recognizable symbols. In his posters and advertisements, the image is the primary means of communication, and he reduces the verbal content to a few words or even just the product name

Question 15

Tadeusz Trepkowski

Answer 15

• 1914-56
• the first Polish poster artist to emerge after World War II, he expressed the tragic memories and aspirations for the future that were deeply fixed in his country’s national psyche. His approach involved reducing imagery and words until content was distilled to its simplest statement. In his famous 1953 antiwar poster (Fig. 21–3), Trepkowski used a few simple shapes to symbolize a devastated city, superimposed on a silhouette of a falling bomb.

Question 16

Henryk Tomaszewski

Answer 16

• 1914-2005
• a Polish poster innovator who led the trend toward developing an aesthetically pleasing approach, escaping from the somber world of tragedy and remembrance into a bright, decorative world of color and shape (Figs. 21–4 and 21–5). In an almost casual collage approach, designs were created from torn and cut pieces of colored paper, then printed by the silkscreen process.

Question 17

Jerzy Flisak

Answer 17

• 1930-2008
• a poster designer who worked in the simplified, colorful collage style of many postwar Polish posters

Question 18

Franciszek Starowiejski

Answer 18

• 1930-2009
• one of the first graphic designers to incorporate the metaphysical and surrealism into Polish posters, representing a darker, more somber side of the national character. This may have represented either a reaction to the social constraints of the dictatorial regime or despair and yearning for the autonomy that has so often been denied the Polish nation during its history.

Question 19

Jan Lenica

Answer 19

• 1928-2001
• pushed the Polish collage style toward a more menacing and surreal communication in posters and experimental animated films. Then, during the mid-1960s, he began using flowing, stylized contour lines that weave through the space and divide it into colored zones that form an image

Question 20

Waldemar Swierzy

Answer 20

• 1931-2013
• included his own personal vision in his poster design, approaching it from a painterly viewpoint. He drew on folk art and twentieth-century fine art for inspiration (Fig. 21–11). This prolific artist created more than a thousand posters in a wide variety of media. The spontaneous quality of much of his work is deceptive, for Swierzy sometimes devoted three weeks to a poster and might even execute a poster five or more times before being satisfied with the results.

Question 21

Roman Cieslewicz

Answer 21

• 1930-96
• Closely associated with the Polish avant-garde theater, he took the poster, a public art form, and transformed it into a metaphysical medium to express profound ideas that would be difficult to articulate verbally (Fig. 21–13). Cieslewicz’s techniques include enlarging collage, montage, and halftone images to a scale that turns the dots into texture, setting up an interplay between two levels of information: the image and the dots that create it

Question 22

Seymour Chwast

Answer 22

• b.1931
• A founder of the Push Pin Studio, his vision is very personal, yet communicates on a universal level. He frequently uses the technique of line drawings overlaid with adhesive color films and experiments with a large variety of media and substrata. Echoes of children’s art, primitive art, folk art, expressionist woodcuts, and comic books appear in his imaginative reinventions of the world. Chwast’s color is frontal and intense

Question 23

Milton Glaser

Answer 23

• b.1929
• a founder of the Push Pin Studio whose versatility and variety of work makes his singular genius hard to categorize. During the 1960s, he created images using flat shapes formed by thin, black-ink contour lines, adding color by applying adhesive color films (Fig. 21–18). Glaser’s concert posters and record album designs manifest a singular ability to combine his personal vision with the essence of the content. Glaser’s 1967 image of the popular folk-rock singer Bob Dylan (Fig. 21–19) is presented as a black silhouette with brightly colored hair patterns inspired by art nouveau sources. During the 1980s and 1990s, Glaser became increasingly interested in illusions and dimensionality (Fig. 21–22). For Glaser, geometric forms, words, and numbers are not merely abstract signs but tangible entities with an object-life that allows them to be interpreted as motifs, just as figures and inanimate objects are interpreted by an artist.

Question 24

Reynolds Ruffins

Answer 24

• b.1930
• An original collaborator on thePush Pin Almanack, he left the studio after a time and became a prominent decorative and children’s book illustrator

Question 25

Edward Sorel

Answer 25

• b.1929
• An original collaborator on thePush Pin Almanack, he left the studio and in 1958 started freelancing, later emerging as one of the major political satirists of his generation.

Question 26

Barry Zaid

Answer 26

• b.1939
• An influential young graphic designer in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he joined Push Pin pin for a few years during this period. As a graphic archeologist basing his work on a thorough study of the graphic vernacular of bygone eras, Zaid became an important force in the revivalism and historicism that were prevalent in graphic design during this period. His historicism did not merely mimic nostalgic forms, for his spatial organization, scale, and color, were of his own time.

Question 27

James McMullan

Answer 27

• b.1934
• A one-time Push Pin member, he revived watercolor, a medium that had declined from a position second only to oil paint for fine art and illustration, and restored it as a means of graphic expression. McMullan achieved prominence during the 1960s with energetic ink-line and watercolor illustrations that often combined multiple images with significant changes in spatial depth and image size and scale, as well as fluid lettering

Question 28

Paul Davis

Answer 28

• b.1938
• An alumnus of Push Pin Studio, he is known for a painting style of minute detail that drew inspiration from primitive colonial American art. He evolved into a master of meticulous naturalism; the solid shapes of his forms project a convincing weight and volume. His work demonstrates enormous inventiveness in relating sensitive portraits to environmental backgrounds and expressive lettering

Question 29

Richard Hess

Answer 29

• 1934-91
• developed a painting technique closely related to the work of Paul Davis, although he was not associated with Push Pin. Hess had a stronger inclination toward surrealism than Davis and was inspired by René Magritte’s spatial illusions. An understanding of the folklore and imagery of nineteenth-century America enabled Hess to produce a number of images that thoroughly captured the essence of this earlier period.

Question 30

Arnold Varga

Answer 30

• 1926-94
• Like Push Pin designers, he combined the traditional conceptualization and layout role of the graphic designer with the image-making role of the illustrator in his newspaper advertisements for two Pittsburgh department stores. His ads used carefully integrated white space and headlines with large, simple illustrations to break through the monotonous gray of the newspaper page. A multiple-image picture-and-caption approach, such as the gourmet shop advertisement for Joseph P. Horne (Fig. 21–31), achieved notable public response—people actually offered to buy this advertisement to hang on their walls!

Question 31

John Berg

Answer 31

• b.1932
• the art director at CBS’s Columbia Records from the early 1960s until 1984. Photographs of musicians performing, and portraits of composers yielded to more symbolic and conceptual images (Fig. 21–37). For two decades, Berg and his staff wrested the maximum potential from the large 961-square-centimeter (150-square-inch) format of vinyl long-play records. The art director became a conceptualizer and collaborator, working with illustrators and photographers to realize imaginative expressions for the spectrum of the musical experience

Question 32

Stan Richard

Answer 32

• b.1932
• The head of the Richards Group in Dallas, he was a catalytic figure in the emergence of Texas as a major design center

Question 33

Woody Pirtle

Answer 33

• b.1943
• One of many major Texas designers who worked for Stan Richards during their formative years, his work epitomizes the originality of Texas graphics. His logo for Mr. and Mrs. Aubrey Hair evidences an unexpected wit, while his Knoll “Hot Seat” poster (Fig. 21–39) ironically combines the clean Helvetica type and generous white space of modernism with regional iconography. In 1988, Pirtle moved on to join the Manhattan office of the British design studio Pentagram.

Question 34

Robert Wesley “Wes” Wilson

Answer 34

• b.1937
• innovator of the psychedelic movement whose swirling letterforms were influenced by art nouveau artist Alfred Roller

Question 35

Victor Moscoso

Answer 35

• b.1936
• the only major artist of the psychedelic movement with formal art training

Question 36

Peter Max

Answer 36

• b.1937
• Art nouveau aspects of psychedelic art were combined with more accessible images and softer colors in his work. One of his most famous images, the 1970 “Love” poster (Fig. 21–44), combined the fluid organic line of art nouveau with the bold, hard contour of the comic book and pop art. In his finest work, Max experimented with images and printing techniques. His posters and merchandise, from mugs and T-shirts to clocks, offered a more palatable version of psychedelic art and found a mass audience among young people across America.

Question 37

David Lance Goines

Answer 37

• b.1945
• proves that even in the late twentieth-century era of overspecialization, it is possible for individual artists and craftsmen to define a personal direction and operate as independent creative forces with total control over their work. He studied and wrote a book on calligraphy, and owns the Saint Hieronymous Press in Berkeley, California, where he designs, illustrates, and hand-letters posters, makes the negatives and plates, and then operates the press to print the edition. Symmetrical composition, simplified line drawing, quiet planes of flat color, and subtle stripes rimming the contours of his forms are characteristics of his poster designs

Question 38

Corita Kent

Answer 38

• 1918-86
• entered the convent of the Immaculate Heart Community (IHC) of Los Angeles and gained notoriety for her iconoclastic approach to her spirituality and artistic practice. She combined childlike forms and saturated colors suggesting a sense of optimism and innocence. Kent infused her work with a deeply personal touch; she appropriated signs, literary texts and phrases, and song lyrics from her everyday environment and used these elements in compositions that assumed new meanings. She explored new territories, spreading spiritual teachings through her artwork

Question 39

Gunther Kieser

Answer 39

• b.1930
• a German master of the European poetic approach to graphic design based on imagery and its manipulation through collage, montage, and both photographic and photomechanical techniques. Kieser brings together images or ideas to create a new vitality, new arrangement, or synthesis of disparate objects (Fig. 21–48). Diverse elements act in concert to make a potent statement. Kieser’s poetic visual statements always have a rational basis that links expressive forms to communicative content

Question 40

Gunter Rambow

Answer 40

• b.1938
• : one of the most innovative image makers of the late twentieth century. In Rambow’s designs, the medium of photography is manipulated, massaged, montaged, and airbrushed to convert the ordinary into the extraordinary. Everyday images are combined or dislocated, then printed as straightforward, documentary black-and-white images in an original metaphysical statement of poetry and profundity

Question 41

Robert Massin

Answer 41

• b.1925
• a Frenchexperimental typographer who designed editions of poetry and plays for the Paris publisher Éditions Gallimard. As a young man, Massin apprenticed in sculpture, engraving, and letter cutting under his father. In its dynamic configurations and use of letterforms as concrete visual form, Massin’s work has affinities with futurist and Dadaist typography, but his intensification of both narrative literary content and visual form into a cohesive unity expressing the author’s meaning is unique

Question 42

Pierre Bernhard

Answer 42

• b.1942
• one of three young French graphic designers who spent a year in Poland studying under Henryk Tomaszewski, who stressed the attitude of being both artist and citizen. They started the Grapus studio in 1970 to realize the mission of turning their graphic design toward political, social, and cultural rather than commercial ends.

Question 43

Francois Miehe

Answer 43

• b.1942
• one of three young French graphic designers who started the Grapus studio in 1970 to realize the mission of turning their graphic design toward political, social, and cultural rather than commercial ends.

Question 44

Gerard Paris-Clavel

Answer 44

• b.1943
• one of three young French graphic designers who spent a year in Poland studying under Henryk Tomaszewski, who stressed the attitude of being both artist and citizen. They started the Grapus studio in 1970 to realize the mission of turning their graphic design toward political, social, and cultural rather than commercial ends.

Question 45

Raul Martinez

Answer 45

• 1927-95
• a leading Cuban graphic designer and painter who created illustrative designs (Fig. 21–64) under the confines of Fidel Castro’s dictatorial regime

Question 46

Felix Beltran

Answer 46

• b.1938
• New York–educated art director for the Commission for Revolutionary Action (COR), which creates internal ideological propaganda and maintains public consciousness of the Cuban Revolution by promoting commemorative days (Fig. 21–65) and past leaders.