The Garden: Elements and Styles, classic format

An overview of the work of illustrator and designer Milton Glaser during the 1960s and 70s

From 1954, when he co-founded the legendary Push Pin Studios, to the late 70s, Milton Glaser largely defined the international visual style for illustration, advertising, and typeface design. Across thousands of works across all print media, he invented a graphic language of bright, flat color, drawing and collage, imbued with his customary wit. This collection from Glaser’s Pop period features hundreds of examples of his work that have not been seen since their original publication, demonstrating the graphic revolution that transformed design and popular culture. Steven Heller is author, co-author, and/or editor of hundreds of seminal books on design and popular culture. Mirko Ilić has collaborated and coauthored numerous books with Glaser and Heller, and is an instructor at Cooper Union and the School of Visual Arts. Beth Kleber is the founding archivist of the Milton Glaser Design Study Center and Archives at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Key Selling Points Milton Glaser was one of the most celebrated graphic designers of his day, whose work graced countless book and album covers, posters, magazine covers, and advertisements, both famous and little-known, and many here unseen since their original publication Glaser’s renowned work garnered solo exhibitions at the Centre Georges Pompidou and the Museum of Modern Art. Creator of the iconic ‘I NY’ logo and cofounder of New York magazine, he received numerous accolades and lifetime achievement awards Interest in Glaser’s legacy continues unabated, with modern creatives acknowledging his influence; in 2014 Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner enlisted Glaser to design the ad campaign and branding for the show’s final season

305 mm × 267 mm 10 ½ × 12 inches 288 pp 1,100 col illus.

Hardback 978 1 58093 613 2 ISBN: 978-1-58093-613-2

9 $7 65.008 1 5 8 0 US9 3 6 1 3 2 £ 44.95 UK € 54.95 EUR $ 84.95 CAN $ 89.95 AUS

Published March 2023 ‘If graphic design has a grand master, then Milton Glaser is Michelangelo.’ – Chip Kidd, The Believer

‘It was Milton Glaser, who – probably more than any graphic designer of his generation – forged the sophisticated, exuberant advertising look of the late 1960s, the time Mad Men is now traversing.’ – New York Times

Also available:

Merz to Emigré and Beyond: Avant-Garde Magazine Design of the Twentieth Century $ 39.95 US £ 24.95 UK

ISBN: 978-0-7148-6594-2 978 0 7148 6594 2 ‘Even if you only knew Glaser’s “I heart New York” design, you’d still have to agree that his impact has been profound worldwide. Since 1977, New York State sees more than $1 million a year in licensing fees from the design; Glaser pocketed only $2,000 for the original, which is now in the Museum of Modern Art ... His iconic 1967 psychedelic Bob Dylan poster is playful, even as it riffs on a famous self-portrait of Marcel Duchamp. It embodies the two elements that define his work: intelligence and humor.’ – PRINT Magazine

Jean Jullien

$ 69.95 US £ 45.00 UK

978 1 83866 319 3 KAWS: WHAT PARTY $ 59.95 US £ 49.95 UK

978 1 83866 394 0

Poet in Three Dimensions Essay by Helaine Posner, Conversation with Donna Dennis, Rackstraw Downes, and Nicole Miller

The first monograph on the architectural sculptor and installation artist and long-time collaborator with the NY School poets

Best known for creating large-scale installation work inspired by American vernacular architecture, Dennis finds beauty in sites shaped by ordinary people, which become repositories for memory and feelings. This book contextualizes Dennis’s work within contemporary art and the women’s movements and examines sculptural installations and public-art projects that represent points of passage on a symbolic life journey. A conversation between Dennis and painter Rackstraw Downes brings to life the artist’s influences. Helaine Posner, Chief Curator Emerita of the Neuberger Museum of Art, is the author of monographs on Kiki Smith and Louise Fishman and co-author of After the Revolution: Women Who Transformed Contemporary Art and of The Reckoning: Women Artists of the New Millennium. Rackstraw Downes is an artist and author of Rackstraw Downes: Nature and Art Are Physical: Writings on Art, 1967 – 2008. Nicole Miller’s essays have appeared in Art in America and other national publications. Key Selling Points This book has a dedicated audience of collectors and art historians interested in the architectural sculpture movement of the 1970s, public art more broadly, and those who study feminism in art The book is supported by exhibitions of Dennis’s new work, including wall dioramas of night skies and scenes, and watercolors in New York and the Private Public Gallery, Hudson, New York Includes insightful text by Helaine Posner, a recognized scholar of feminist art, plus commentary from Dennis on the sources and process of creating the work

289 × 213 mm 9 ½ × 11 ½ inches 232 pp 250 col illus.

Hardback ISBN: 978-1-58093-602-6 978 1 58093 602 6

9 $7 65.008 1 5 8 0 US9 3 6 0 2 6 £ 44.95 UK € 54.95 EUR $ 84.95 CAN $ 89.95 AUS

Published April 2023

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BLUE BRIDGE/red shift, 1991–93

BLUE BRIDGE/red shift was inspired by three lift bridges that run side by side over the Hackensack River in New Jersey. I loved the way small houses were perched within the complex structures of the bridges. BLUE BRIDGE/red shift looks like a drawbridge with a little green-painted house on the side of the track and another over it. The track is lit with a row of blue bulbs. In subway language, blue bulbs indicate the location of emergency phones and exits. Along the track and between the two houses is strung a complex tangle of tubes, and the green house glows red from within. It is the control house. The house over the track has a clock on the wall, set to just after midnight. There is the sound of a boat and a foghorn conversing across great distances.

As I completed the work in the weeks after my mother died, I decided to dedicate it to her and to the memory of our complex but loving relationship. After she died, I added “red shift” to the title because in astronomy, a celestial body glowing red is understood to be moving away from us, while something that appears blue is moving toward us.

98 Donna Dennis: Poetry and Prose

Helaine Posner

My work is drawn from the American vernacular, inspired by buildings shaped not by architects but by ordinary people. My installations are about buildings as repositories for, and the expressions of, memories, feelings, spiritual power. I like buildings that bear witness to those who have lived there, worked there, passed through.1

—Donna Dennis

Donna Dennis is one of a small group of groundbreaking women artists, including Alice Aycock, Jackie Ferrara, and Mary Miss, who pioneered the architectural sculpture movement of the early 1970s. Dennis is best known for creating large-scale installation work inspired by American vernacular architecture, focusing on rural and urban structures such as tourist cabins, hotels, bridges, subway stations, and a roller coaster. She deconstructs and condenses her architectural prototypes in a language that is eloquently detailed and highly formal, while imbuing them with a deep sense of longing and loss. Dennis finds beauty in sites that are typically overlooked, creating works that represent “stopping places, points of passage on a metaphorical journey through life.”2 Her works appear to invite entry into interior spaces yet, at reduced scale, remain inaccessible except through the viewers’ imagination. Dennis’s seemingly familiar yet often darkly mysterious sites evoke memories, encourage reflection, and allude to the transient nature of life.

Donna Dennis was born in Springfield, Ohio, in 1942 and raised in a strict, multigenerational Scots Presbyterian home, the eldest of four daughters. Drinking, smoking, and card playing were prohibited, and Sunday church services were followed by home Bible study. The only other reading material allowed on the sabbath were National Geographic articles on missionary work in Africa and India, and John Milton’s Paradise Lost illustrated by Gustave Doré. These detailed black-and-white wood engravings depicting the fall of man fascinated Dennis, who found the dramatic portrayals of Satan far more intriguing than those of Adam and Eve. She loved to draw from an early age and was encouraged to so by her parents and grandparents. In 1949 the family moved to Rye, New York, and her father worked for the Foreign Policy Association in New York City, an organization devoted to promoting world peace. While socially conservative, her parents were politically progressive and idealistic. When Dennis declared her intention to pursue a career in art, they initially resisted, asking, “What are you going to do to make the world a better place?”3 She would eventually find a meaningful response.

As a student at Rye High School, Dennis benefited from the mentorship of art teacher Mabel D’Amico, an artist in her own right whose husband Victor founded the art education program at the Museum

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Conversation: Donna Dennis, Rackstraw Downes, Nicole Miller

Nicole: The two of you have known one another for more than fifty years, and you’ve each built a body of work with ambitious breadth and scale. You both have an affinity for urban and industrial forms, from bridges and train tracks to satellite dishes. Before we talk about your work, I’m eager to hear about your friendship. Do you remember how you met?

Rackstraw: We met at the Fischbach Gallery at an opening.

Donna: Wow, Rackstraw. Your memory is so good.

Rackstraw: Well, you were a very striking person. You didn’t look like anybody else in the room.

Donna: I was making an effort because I was very shy.

Rackstraw: I saw you several times at openings or poetry readings, and I thought, “Who is that person?”

Nicole: What year was that?

Donna: I arrived in New York in the fall of 1965.

Rackstraw: That’s about when I arrived, I think, the fall of 1964.

Donna: I was in Paris in the fall of ’64.

Rackstraw: John Ashbery was in Paris, too. Donna: And Peter Schjeldahl, who was a classmate of mine at Carleton College. I was there with Martha Diamond and we’d hear about John Ashbery from Peter. He also talked about Ted Berrigan. He’d get a letter from Ted and be abuzz for days.

Nicole: So before you even arrived in New York, you were hearing about some of the people that you would eventually meet.

Donna: Yes. And you were connected right away with the poetry world, too, Rackstraw.

Rackstraw: I was. Through Rudy Burckhardt and Yvonne Jacquette. I met them in Maine, as friends of Neil Welliver. And I ran into you on a number of occasions, until you had your own show.

Donna: My strategy when I came to New York was to try to dress in a way that I’d be noticed. I had my mother’s 1930s black velvet top with a cape collar and a velvet skirt that was a little longer than what most people were wearing. Then I got a hat and a feather boa. I remember Scott Burton told me that I was Annie Hall before Annie Hall.

Rackstraw: You did get noticed.

Donna: I was sort of in love with the 1920s and ’30s. Maybe that relates to jazz.

Rackstraw: I think so, too.

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99 of Modern Art and The Art Barge in Amagansett, New York. Mabel D’Amico told Dennis’s mother, “Donna has everything it takes. She can go as far as she wants to go with her art,” a vote of confidence that Dennis values to this day.4 In addition to her classwork, Dennis created sets for student theater productions and was recognized in her high school yearbook as “our poet and artist.”5 D’Amico’s encouragement, along with her grandfather’s counsel, “You can’t expect anyone to believe in you if you don’t believe in yourself,” helped guide her through her years at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, where she struggled to find her place.6 She was relieved when the conservative head of the art department retired and the requirement to create a senior thesis painting based on Shakespeare or the Bible was lifted. Allowed to select her own subject matter, she chose to paint a lushly colored portrait of tree as a metaphor for her personal growth.

While at Carleton, Dennis saw an announcement for a program run by sculptor Roger Barr at the American Center in Paris and chose to use the remainder of her college fund to attend, after completing her B.A. She was delighted to have daily access to a studio where she could paint and draw from the model. Barr was an inspiring teacher and Paris was the place to be. She tried her hand at making colorful abstract paintings, à la Serge Poliakoff, but ultimately felt frustrated with the results. In response, Dennis decided to make the ugliest painting she could conceive: a self-portrait with the word RATS scrawled in red across the top and a large gaping mouth with green tongue below. She decided to reject abstraction in favor of imagery and content, and never looked back. In Paris, she enjoyed the company of a group of fellow artists, actors, and poets including Carleton classmates, painter Martha Diamond and poet (later art critic) Peter Schjeldahl, conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth, and actor Robert De Niro. It was a liberating time.

The year was 1965 and American art was ascendent. Dennis saw the work of Ellsworth Kelly and Andy Warhol in Paris and found it far more exciting than French contemporary art. She opted to move to New York after a summer traveling through England, Scotland, Italy, and Greece. Fortunately, Martha Diamond and Peter Schjeldahl had already relocated there, and they helped her settle in. Schjeldahl introduced her to his circle of friends at The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church, including Ted Berrigan, a prominent figure in the second generation of New York School of Poets, who became her first love and mentor. Dennis attended Wednesday night poetry readings and parties with Berrigan and became part of a group of artists and poets that included such notable figures as Jane Freilicher, Yvonne Jacquette, Alex Katz, John Ashbery, and Frank O’Hara. She was pleased to feel accepted by this talented crowd. She worked as a secretary at the Whitney Museum of American Art, as a “Gal Friday” for a book cover designer, and later as a picture researcher for the Encyclopedia Americana. That position involved hours of research in the New York Public Library picture collection, which also fed her art. Dennis took evening classes at the Art Students League and shared a studio with Martha Diamond on Lower Broadway before finding her own downtown space.

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POETRY AND PROSE The emergence of the women’s movement in the 1970s, and Dennis’s participation in consciousness-raising groups along with artists Denise Green, Rosemary Mayer, Adrian Piper, Joan Synder, and others, fostered a sense of community and affirmed the importance of sharing her life experiences with others, primarily through her art. In fact, she believed it was her duty to do so. Feminism helped her recognize that “so much has been lost to the world in dismissing the gifts of, and the voices of women. I wanted to be part of discovering and bringing that voice to the fore and making sure it would never again be lost or silenced . . . My work is a lot about getting people to find beauty in places they might have overlooked or dismissed, just as women’s lives have been overlooked and dismissed.”7

Dennis also found inspiration in Virginia Woolf’s classic essay A Room of One’s Own in which the writer imagines that Shakespeare had a sister whose talents were equal to his own, and “was as adventurous, as imaginative, as agog to see the world as he was.”8 Ridiculed and rejected by men, Judith Shakespeare met a very different fate, committing suicide and never writing a word. Woolf concludes her essay by declaring “She lives in you and in me, and in many other women . . . But she lives.”9 Stirred by Woolf’s words, Dennis resolved to listen to and learn from other women and encourage them to trust in and nurture their talents, as she would her own, thereby making the world a richer and better place.

About the same time, Dennis was entering an art world in which the inclusive, pluralist impulse of postmodernism, as well as feminism, was supplanting the modernist notion of art as universal and unitary, revealing it to be rooted in the unexamined assumptions and biases of a patriarchal culture. Room was now claimed for subject matter, materials, and approaches that had long been dismissed because they

Major Works

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‘To dwell principally on Dennis’s realism ... is to miss the poetic, mythic nature of her art ... She is of that American strain of deceptively straightforward artists whose work harbors the dark visions underlying Edward Hopper’s cannily constructed paintings and Robert Frost’s subtly haunted verse.’ – Robert Berlind, The Brooklyn Rail ‘What really sets Dennis’s work apart is the way it draws its inspiration from the real world, rather than from art theory, and the way it speaks to the heart rather than the intellect.’ – George Melrod, Art in America

Also available:

The Dinner Party: Restoring Women to History $ 45.00 US £ 32.95 UK

978 1 58093 389 6 Nancy Holt/ Inside Outside $ 50.00 US £ 34.95 UK

ISBN: 978-1-58093-597-5 978 1 58083 597 5 Intimate Geometries: The Art and Life of Louise Bourgeois

$ 150.00 US £ 100.00 UK

978 1 58093 363 6