How many legends can you think of who are known by a single name? Shakespeare, Caruso, Elvis, Cher, Madonna, Bono, Jesus...The list goes on, of course, and in the world of art and design it includes Leonardo, Daumier, Hopper, Warhol, Milton, Crumb...and Seymour.

 Left to right: Self-Portrait as Map; Hell, Really; Einstein. Copyright Seymour Chwast.

Seymour Chwast, who with Milton Glaser and Edward Sorel founded Pushpin Studios in 1954, arrived on the scene at just the right moment. In the 1950s, advertising art and design, more commonly known back then as "commercial art," was somewhat like an outcast, with one arm in the grip of an increasingly outmoded form of nostalgia and the other being tugged at by the forces of Swiss-style Modernism of the Helvetica kind.

By the time Seymour (who had his work published in Seventeen magazine when he was still in high school) had survived some notably unsuccessful ventures, comically recounted by Steve Heller in his Introduction to Seymour's new book, The Obsessive Images of Seymour Chwast (Chronicle Books 2009), he also had developed his signature approach. Not to be confused with an artistic style, Seymour's approach has to do with a way of exposing (Seymour's term) the content and meaning of his subject rather than by illustrating the subject itself.

He had come up with something new - no, revolutionary, according to Heller - and over the next five decades he opened doors to succeeding generations of artists and designers. Seymour says that he is inspired by great poster art. "I studied their concepts and compositions along with scale, color, and form. [Posters] evoke drama, mystery, humor, and poetry."

These elements consistently mark his work, which is virtuosic but never slick, and ranges from illustrations for the New Yorker to art done solely for the sake of exploring an idea, such as the 54-sheet Brylcream Man series. Seymour is not one to sit around waiting for an art director to call on him. He is constantly at work creating paintings, cut metal pieces and his newly animated online quarterly, The Nose.

At a presentation sponsored by the AIGA New York last Tuesday, a conversation took place between Steve Heller and Seymour Chwast that rocked the audience, made up of art directors, designers and artists of all ages. He projected movie-screen sized images from the book while the two recounted historic and hysterically funny episodes from Seymour's career.

Seymour, who grew up in Coney Island, seems to be 99.8% directed by his funny bone. When asked by a young member of the audience if he was ever put off by the seriousness of the design and art worlds, where everything becomes so important that laughter might be taken for rudeness, Seymour answered, "Not at all. If everyone else joked around like I do, I'd be out work." When asked, "Do you feel that your success was inevitable," he humbly replied, "No, I feel lucky," whereupon an ad hoc discussion of what constituted genius erupted amid the audience. He who had the final word said, "It's so simple. Seymour's on stage and we're out here."

On July 11, Seymour will be signing copies of The Obsessive Images at Oblong Books & Music, in Millerton, NY at 3:00 pm and in Rhinebeck, NY at 7:30 pm. Please check the website for directions and information.

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