

Question: What historic art movements have most influenced your work?
Milton Glaser: In terms of art movements. Well, I've been persistent in using the history of art as my basic resource. And my favorite periods are certainly the Viennese Cessation and American Modernism and my attachment to Italy and the Renaissance and Piero della Francesca. And the two poles of my affection and experience and influence are Morandi, studied with the fantastic show here at the Metropolitan that was profound and deep and incredibly moving. He was a man who wanted nothing. He didn't want women or success or fame or money, and alternately, Picasso, who wanted everything. He wanted all the money, all the fame, all the women. And I find my personality in life bouncing between those two models.
This was interesting to me because I never really saw these kinds of areas and artists come across in any of Glaser’s work that I had researched in the past. This led me to go deeper into research of Glaser’s work. Specifically his work from “The Push Pin Graphic”. This was a self promoting mailer that he and the other founding members of the design studio of the same name created to showcase their talents and ideas.
Some his work for the mailer had shades of Picasso’s
influen
ce as can be seen in the sort of gestural drawings to the right.Upon further research into Push Pin through the book “The Push Pin Graphic” by Seymour Chwast (another of the Push Pin founders) I found that one of the ideas behind the design studio and the mailer itself was to sort of go against conventional design and produce things that were both interesting and different. I felt that this could be where Glaser got his influences from American Modernism as I have found that particular movement was started under similar principals and ideas.

