The School of Visual Arts launches a career retrospective of Broadway illustrator James McMullan, known for his artwork for Lincoln Center Theater, Nov. 26. SVA will also honor the artist with its Masters Series Award.
School of Visual Arts (SVA) will honor James McMullan—one of America’s foremost illustrators—with the Masters Series Award and retrospective exhibition. Best known for his Lincoln Center Theater posters and his psychologically intense style of realism, he has also designed and illustrated many magazine articles, book and album covers, and advertisements. “The Masters Series: James McMullan” is on view from November 26 through December 15 at SVA Gallery, 209 East 23 Street, New York City.
McMullan Designs to Honor Innovative Choreographers
Aug 12, 2001
Selected Press
| December 13, 2012 | |
Could the King of Disco Art have Lived Anywhere but New York? Of Course Not
By Steven Heller, co-chair of the MFA Design program at the School of Visual Arta and co-founder of the MFA Design Criticism program. |
|
A new exhibition spotlights James McMullan, whose illustrations have helped defined a Gotham's art scene for half a century.
Few contemporary illustrators have contributed to New York City's visual legacy as much as James McMullan—from visual essays in New York Magazine during in the '60s and '70s (including the imagery for the article that inspired the film Saturday Night Fever) to an ongoing series of narrative posters for the Lincoln Center Theater. McMullan, born in 1934 in Tsingtao, China, the son of Anglican missionaries, has always needed, what he calls "the laissez-faire of New York to release the tortured artist underneath." The sophistication of his New York clients, and support of playwrights like John Guare and art directors like Milton Glaser, have allowed him "to sneak doses of melancholy energy into assignments that were ostensibly about something else: The loneliness of my disco paintings, for instance, as opposed to the glitter and sheen of the movie." On the occasion of his first major retrospective at New York's School of Visual Arts, McMullan says that, "It's hard to imagine my getting away with so much uncommercial attitude in Los Angeles." The "SVA Masters Series" exhibition is an honor bestowed on artists, designers, or admen on whose shoulders others in their disciplines have stood. McMullan's work dating from 1957 (on view at SVA's Master's Gallery, 209 East 23rd St.) reveals an evolutionary process of what he calls the struggle "to use drawing, particularly of the figure, to express the emotional content of the stories and plays I am commissioned to illustrate." Anyone involved with or interested in the act of drawing will find McMullan's struggles to be as illuminating as the actual illustrations. The SVA Gallery is located at 209 East 23rd Street. Visit sva.edu. » Read the complete article here |
|
| November 26, 2012 | |
PLAYBILL.COM School of Visual Arts Launches James McMullan Retrospective
By Adam Hetrick |
|
|
McMullan's bold, often-muscular style has graced the Lincoln Center Theater posters for the revivals of Carousel, Anything Goes and South Pacific.His artwork also indelibly captured such new works as The Light in the Piazza, Hello Again, Other Desert Cities, Arcadia and Parade. The retrospective, presented through Dec. 15, showcases McMullan's work from the "1950s; 1960s editorial illustrations for publications such as TIME, Esquire, Rolling Stone and New York magazine; theatre posters from Lincoln Center; and new paintings to be published next year in his memoir about growing up in China," according to SVA. McMullan will be honored with SVA's Masters Series Award On Dec. 4 at 7 PM, he will speak about his career with iconic graphic designer Milton Glaser, who is the SVA acting chairman and Master Series laureate. The SVA Gallery is located at 209 East 23rd Street. Visit sva.edu. » Read the complete article here |
|
| October 8, 2012 | |
BROADWAY WORLD |
|
|
|
| July 26, 2012 | |
 |
|
THE STAMPS OF DANCERS
While the financially troubled United States Postal Service may be streamlining operations, it continues to commission artists for new stamps. On Saturday it introduces “Innovative Choreographers,” four first-class stamps depicting the dance giants Isadora Duncan, José Limón, Katherine Dunham and Bob Fosse. James McMullan, best known for the posters he has created for the Lincoln Center Theater, illustrated the stamps. Working primarily from archival photographs, Mr. McMullan said he wanted his stamps to be different from the rest. “I love dance, and I love gesture,” he said in a telephone interview from his home and studio in Sag Harbor, on Long Island. “This was the opportunity to make something unusual, something with movement rather than a static portrait.” Each choreographer is depicted in a move identifiable with his or her work. In addition to the stamp project Mr. McMullan has also been looking through his archives in preparation for a retrospective of his work that opens on Nov. 21 at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, where he teaches. “There will be materials besides the theater posters,” he said, explaining that the show will include life drawings — both pencil and gouache — that he has been making for more than 30 years. |
|
January 19, 2012 |
|
 |
|
James McMullan on the grid I’m not sure there’s a greater significance to James McMullan’s use of grids, but I noticed them in sufficient number to start thinking about why they might have appealed to him. The grids impose order, but I’ve always thought of McMullan’s work as deceptively methodical. He often creates works based on staged photographs, and at first glance, the drawings can appear to be a wholly faithful representation. A close look, however, reveals something brooding and wistful, maybe dangerous. The grids add a sense of being confined and a longing for escape (intentional or not). » Read the complete article here Container List is the blog of the Milton Glaser Design Study Center and Archives, featuring weekly graphics and ephemera from the design archives at the School of Visual Arts. For this and other articles featuring the work of Mr. McMullan, visit the Container List at the Glaser Archives.
|
|
New for 2012 |
|
|
|
In 2012, the U.S. Postal Service pays tribute to four influential choreographers who changed the art of dance: Isadora Duncan, José Limón, Katherine Dunham, and Bob Fosse. Art director Ethel Kessler designed the stamps using illustrations by James McMullan, widely known for his work for Lincoln Center Theater in New York City. » Read the entire article |
|
 |
|
"When the Play Is a Memory, His Image Lasts. James McMullan's posters capture the essence of complex New York shows."
By Hugh Hart [James McMullan]'s craftsmanship is on display through Sept. 23 at Art Center College of Design's Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery. "The Theater Posters of James McMullan" features 22 "three-sheet" posters, a term that originated at a time when three separate panels of paper were glued together to make each 3-by-7-foot poster. The show also offers more than 100 watercolors, pencil sketches, alternate versions and reference photographs of such actors as Donald Sutherland, Sam Waterston and James McDaniels, who have posed for his posters. » Read the entire article
|
|
October 11, 1998 |
|
|
|
"Condensing The Essence Of a Show Into a Poster"
By David Leopold In late-19th-century Paris, Alphonse Mucha created the lasting public image of Sarah Bernhardt in a series of iconic Art Nouveau posters that have come to symbolize the actress and her plays. In much the same way in late-20th-century New York, James McMullan's posters for Lincoln Center Theater have defined the sensibility of the institution and the essence of the works it presents, whether the effervescent musical "Anything Goes" in 1987 or the Edward Albee drama "A Delicate Balance" in 1996. » Read the entire article |
