New Show at The Church Looks at the Revolutionary Push Pin Studio

Back in 1954, something of a creative revolution began in New York City in the world of art and design. That’s the year Milton Glaser, Seymour Chwast, Reynold Ruffins and Edward Sorel, artists who met as students at The Cooper Union, envisioned and created a new way forward in terms of illustration and graphic design.

As the story goes, in 1953 Sorel and Chwast were working at Esquire magazine when they were both fired on the same day. They decided to form their own art studio and name it “Push Pin” after The Push Pin Almanack, which they had self-published while working at Esquire. They rented space on East 17th Street in Manhattan and a few months later, Glaser fresh from a Fulbright Fellowship in Europe, joined the studio, as did Reynold Ruffins shortly thereafter.

Soon, Push Pin Studios added to its ranks artists Paul Davis and James McMullan, among others. In the decades that followed, Push Pin artists created some of the most memorable and impactful images of the mid-20th century. Along the way, they welcomed new artists and illustrators who shared their vision and influenced successive generations who followed in their design footsteps.

On October 5, The Church in Sag Harbor opened “Yes, No, and WOW: the Push Pin Studios Revolution,” an exhibition co-curated by The Church co-founder and artist April Gornik and Myrna Davis, who worked at Push Pin Studios in the early 1960s and is the wife of artist Paul Davis. The show takes its name from a quote by Glaser, who once said, “There are three responses to a piece of design — yes, no, and WOW! Wow is the one to aim for.”

The work on view in this show is, indeed, “wow” and includes materials from the Push Pin archive including chapbooks, copies of the Push Pin Almanack (the monthly publication marketed the designers’ services and talents to ad agencies, publishing houses, art studios and an assorted collection of subscribing fans), posters, books, vinyl record covers and objects from the six aforementioned artists. The pieces in the exhibition span decades — from Push Pin’s founding in the 1950s well into the 21st century, and during the run of the exhibition, which goes through December 30, The Church will present talks by surviving studio members and other related activities.

“April asked me if I would co-curate, and I think it’s been an interesting process, with April coming from the outside, me from the inside from ’60 to ’65,” said Myrna Davis, who recalled how she got the Push Pin job. “I was working at George Nelson Associates before joining Push Pin and someone said Push Pin was looking for someone just like me. I had lunch with Milton and Seymour, and they said, ‘Will you take the job?’ I said, ‘What’s the job description?’ They said, ‘That’s why we need you. We don’t have one.’”

During her time at Push Pin Davis took on creative work, including editing and research for the Push Pin Graphic. She adds that she also persuaded Glaser and Chwast to change the publication’s name from the Monthly Graphic so she wouldn’t have to frequently explain to subscribers why they hadn’t received an issue.

Though Push Pin Studios was entrenched as a Manhattan design house in the Mad Men era, it turns out that three of the six artists highlighted in this show have strong ties to the East End — specifically, Paul Davis, Jim McMullan and the late Reynold Ruffins, all of whom lived in Sag Harbor, and, in the case of Davis, still do. For Gornik, the realization of Push Pin’s connection to Sag Harbor came, as she says, “by accumulation of experience only.”

“I started to realize several members of Push Pin were here at around the same time — Reynold Ruffins, Paul Davis and Jim McMullan,” explained Gornik. “I met Reynold last.”

Ruffins, who died in 2021, was well-known in the Sag Harbor community, having garnered a reputation for his playful and graphically striking designs which graced the marketing materials of CONPOSH (Coalition of Neighborhoods for the Preservation of Sag Harbor), a civic organization founded in the village in 1993. He also created a series of children’s books in his unique artistic style.

“I had met him through his greeting card designs, which I kept because I loved them so much. I was knocked out by his animations,” said Gornik. “The more I got to know about Push Pin, just by various references that happened, the more I realized, these are people who are here, have been here and had such a galvanizing effect on the culture.

“It’s something I didn’t realize until I started digging into it. I had no idea of the global impact Push Pin had both in America and overseas,” she added. “The more I read about it, the bigger it becomes.”

Though the names of the Push Pin artists may not be all that familiar to those outside the design field, the imagery they created often is. Perhaps none is more iconic than the work of the late Milton Glaser, who not only co-founded New York magazine in 1968, but also created the legendary “I ♥ NY” logo in the 1970s.

“Glaser, who is just enormous, understood art in a way I don’t,” said Gornik. “The whole thing about how scalable Milton Glaser’s work is — it can be enormous or tiny. It could be on the side of a skyscraper or on a coffee cup. To enlarge or reduce an idea or message to that kind of availability is amazing.

“When you look at Seymour Chwast — the crazy animation he did, which was so copied by people like Peter Max — and Ed Sorel, you always saw his work because of New Yorker and New York magazine,” said Gornik. “There’s so much impact.”

Paul Davis, also, has received great recognition over the years for his work, which includes many memorable posters created for Joseph Papp’s Public Theater in New York. Among them is the one on view in this show which is for the 1976 play “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf.” It was a poster that graced subway tunnels and train stations across the New York region for years.

“The ‘Colored Girls’ poster was everywhere when I first moved to New York in ’78 or ’79,” recalled Gornik. “I remember being on the subway and seeing that poster and being riveted by it, kind of obsessively. I was wondering, where did that come from?

“There was no Google then. I went to see the play based entirely on the poster,” she added.

“For Paul, it started with political posters, the Carnegie Hall and Che Guevara posters,” explained Davis. “Joe Papp wanted something gritty and [advertising executive] Gene Case recommended Paul. The posters had a big impact.”

In turn, Paul Davis recommended James McMullan to Bernard Gersten, an executive producer at Lincoln Center Theater, and McMullan went on to create a legendary collection of theater posters for Lincoln Center Theater productions, including the one on view at The Church for the 1994 revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Carousel.”

When asked about the innovative nature of their work, Gornik offers insight into what made the Push Pin artists so groundbreaking in their field.

“The generally appreciated style at the time was careful, arranged — a little like Swiss precision,” Gornik explained. “Their goal was to introduce a kind of animated joy into this hallowed world, and to make it work in a number of ways, from the variety of typefaces to some of the early Push Pin graphics. In making folios, they would have this gray filigree behind black letters. It was the opposite of what you’re taught, like an artist drawing on the edge of a picture, and making it work. They were transgressive, but transgressive in a celebration of joy.”

As much as she appreciates the work and the artists in this show, Gornik said that she wishes there were a few women artists represented among the Push Pin ranks. But that was another era.

“Reynold said that his wife, Joan, was forced out of Cooper Union when she was a student because she was pregnant,” said Gornik. “She was a very talented artist and he was very frustrated by that.”

In terms of calling Sag Harbor home, Paul and Myrna Davis were the first group to live year round in the village.

“We rented for a month in 1966, bought our house the same year, and lived there full time from ‘68 to ‘84, and have been back since 2007,” explained Davis. “Paul did many of his most famous posters for the Public Theater in his little studio here.

“We thought it was nice here,” Davis said. “The truth is, we just loved the feeling of community, the scale, the accessibility of the harbor. I knew that we might live here full time at some point, and, as a New Yorker, wanted to be able to walk to stores and around town. Even though economically depressed at the time, it was a beautiful village.”

According to Davis, a few years later James McMullan bought his home in Sag Harbor and in the 1980s, moved to the village full time (he and his wife, Kate, returned to New York City in 2015), and Reynold Ruffins and his wife, Joan, arrived in Sag Harbor, around the time they retired.

And it’s a village that is now presenting an exhibition highlighting the groundbreaking talents of the artists of Push Pin Studios. The show at The Church is arranged by artist, with each of the six having his own work displayed in a specific spot in the gallery.

“There’s something about the ebullience of this work that I think merited not a messy installation, but kind of salon style, a glut of pleasure on each artist’s wall,” said Gornik. “Upstairs, we have objects in vitrines and sculpture in the middle. Then we also have books on the table for the library.

“I want it to feel like a voyage of discovery,” she added.

“Each of these artists could fill The Church,” Davis noted. “It’s been challenging to represent their full career.”

“In all the work we’re showing, there’s a kind of confident optimism and their confidence comes from their humanity,” Gornik said. “They know it’s good, important and positive. It’s not careful and it’s not contrived. The work is fantastic. I think their impact has echoed into the 21st century. It’s a personal audacity they brought that is particular to them.”

“It was a time when everyone read all the same magazines,” Davis added. “It was a golden age.”

“Yes, No, and WOW: the Push Pin Studios Revolution” runs through December 30 at The Church, 48 Madison Street, Sag Harbor. For a full list of upcoming events related to the exhibition, visit thechurchsagharbor.org.