Happy Birthday, Bach
Graphic artist Seymour Chwast was my neighbor in Woodstock, NY
Seymour Chwast (“Kwast”) has a great range of imagination and a lifetime of perfected graphic art technique. I’m re-reading his illustrated book, Happy Birthday, Bach, because Johann Sebastian Bach was born 337 years ago this month.
Mr. Chwast was my neighbor when I was a teenager. My family lived in “The Larks Nest”, a house built in 1825 just outside Woodstock, NY. When it became part of the Byrdcliffe Art Colony in the early 1900’s, a red barn was moved next to it. With a large new fireplace, the barn was a meeting place for the artists. My father used it for his painting studio.
A lot of Woodstock houses belong to people who work in New York City and come “up to the country” for weekends and summers. Our neighbors on Glasco Turnpike were all artists of different kinds.
Next door on one side lived a playwright and a potter. On the other was an oil painting artist. Not far up Larks Nest Road, a one-lane dirt pathway, a popular musician built a house in the 1960’s. Across from us to the left was the summer home of an Abrams Art Books executive who, once when I visited him with my dad, gave us an amazing new coffee-table book to take home.
And across the turnpike from us slightly to the right lived Seymour Chwast and his wife, also a graphic designer.
Much later, I became aware of Chwast’s prominence in the New York graphic art world. He and the most famous of the profession, Milton Glaser, were two of the founders of Push Pin Studios, a “revolutionary force in the field of graphic design”; for example, they took a stand against the Vietnam War.
But back to Bach!
I like how Chwast explores different graphic styles in this book. He collaborated with (that punster!) Peter Schickele, as they follow the 17th century composer Bach through the years of his life and then take him on into the 20th century.
Johann Sebastian Bach had two wives in his lifetime, and 20 children.
I’m just thinking, if in 1960 my mom had asked me to go across the street to borrow a cup of sugar, I might eventually have worked in the design studio at Push Pin Studios. (More likely in the mail room!)
Celebrate creativity in our beautiful world. Help to protect it.
Thanks, Deda, for sharing such a delightful book! Have a great week. Joy!
Your post are always so interesting and inspirational! Thank you!