Saul Steinberg [ Keywords ]

ROMANIA

“A land of child prodigies, we were born speaking two or three languages, it’s a good start for learning to doubt. What’s more, it was a place where very early on you were accustomed to rubbing shoulders with a wide range of madness. It was part of the decor, paranoia for example was as natural as crossing the street.”

THE NEW YORKER

A major avant-garde magazine created by Harold Ross in 1925. The editorial stated that it was “the best magazine in the world for those who can’t read!”.
On 25 October 1941, Steinberg published his first drawing in it; he would go on to publish more than 800.
Chas Addams (the creator of The Addams Family), Garrett Price, James Thurber, André François, Jean-Jacques Sempé and Ronald Searle all worked for the magazine.
“The New Yorker represents my political world. It’s my duty. I articulate a subversive political expression.”

SATIRE

“I made satirical drawings in the period when I was learning to walk and juggle with drawing. What interests me, in a way, is to translate a certain vision of the world like a painter. I employ humour, for example, or satire… like a poetic stenographer, and when you laugh at a drawing it’s not because you’re amused, you laugh because you see that you can understand something very difficult in an unconventional way.”

Saul Steinberg, Untitled (Vera in the Shower), 1946.
Ink on paper. Collection of Dr. Karin Spiesshofer, Switzerland. © Dominik Golob Photography.

LINE

The economy of graphic means often favoured by illustrators (a simple line in pencil or ink) allows them to rapidly develop a style: some work with a round, rather sensual line, others with a sharp or cutting line, etc.
Especially at the beginning of his career, Steinberg went in for the “one-line drawing”: a continuous line where the pencil never stops, a thread which unwinds on the page.
“One line always leads to another… I draw something which suddenly makes me want to draw something else which straight away makes me want to draw, etc. You see, I draw, then I think.”

Stefan Moses, Untitled (Steinberg, Village Studio), 1961. Photographic print.
Collection of Gertrud Vowinckel-Textor, Cologne.
© Stefan Moses. Photo : M. Bertola.

QUOTATION

From art (Courbet, Seurat, Van Gogh) to children’s drawings, primitive art and urban graffiti, Steinberg liked playing with references. Thus, The Angelus by Millet, which hangs in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, is literally quoted for the cover of the magazine The New Yorker of 6 June 1970 and desanctified through the repeated use of a rubber stamp.
“I use certain elements of the alphabet that were invented by the Moderns to gain inspiration. I am ready to copy anything by anybody.”

Saul Steinberg, Untitled (Cover of The New Yorker, 06.06.1970), 1970.
Oil, ink and rubber stamp on canvas. Collection of Dr. Karin Spiesshofer,
Switzerland. © Dominik Golob Photography.

FAKE DOCUMENTS

The stateless Steinberg became a naturalized American in 1943. It took four years to obtain the necessary papers. He subsequently exploited this difficulty by producing numerous false official documents. Perhaps his secret agent activities also provided material for imagining all sorts of fakes, created for himself and his artist friends.

Saul Steinberg, Passport, c. 1952. Ink, rubber and collage on paper.
Private Collection, Germany © York von Wittern.

SECRET AGENT

During the Second World War, Saul Steinberg was a real secret agent. Between 1943 and 1945, he was engaged as an officer in Naval Intelligence and the Office of Strategic Services the famous OSS of the US Army! Steinberg went on missions in China, India, Algeria and Italy, respectively. He illustrated reports and propaganda drawings.
In many of his drawings, there are fingerprints, rubber stamps and signatures… some even resemble fake documents. Who needs a false identity more than a good secret agent?

WRITER

“I have said that in a way I am one of the very rare examples of men who have continued their childhood drawing without much change. Every morning, I spend two or three hours drawing in a sketchbook, I work things out on paper. It’s a bit like writing.”
Steinberg used the codes of the author’s manuscript by overloading his drawing with deletions, scribbles and notes. His false text is framed, crossed-out, underlined… until it becomes totally unreadable and is nothing more than a visual composition of rhythms and pauses reflecting the thinking process.

POLYGLOTTE

Steinberg grew up in a household where both Yiddish and Romanian were spoken. In school, he studied French, German, Latin, and Greek and later learned Italian, Spanish, and English. Steinberg was a great literature enthusiast and read widely in different languages throughout his life.

CARTOGRAPHY

“It is an honor for me, an ex-child, to know that during my life I really found myself in countries and on oceans and rivers that I had seen on the planisphere and knew through Jules Verne.”

TAMPON

Steinberg appropriated the rubber stamp like a pencil or a brush and even made them himself in his studio. He invented a vocabulary which he developed through the repetition of forms until it constituted a visual identity. The rubber stamp becomes trace, imprint, emblem and/or signature all at once. Alternatively, the presence of this administrative object evokes what he referred to as his “terror of authority”.

NOSE

The nose motif appears in many surrealist and absurd portraits by Steinberg. Inspired by the novel The Nose by the Russian writer Gogol (published in 1836), Steinberg repeatedly turns to a scene from the book in which Major Koliakov replaces his stolen nose. His meeting in 1947 with Nabokov, who wrote a biography of Gogol, undoubtedly contributed to the artist’s interest in this literary work. The nose also features in Steinberg’s childhood memories: the scent of the Romanian forest and the smell of cardboard in his father’s factory.

Saul Steinberg , Untitled (Cocktail), 1964.
Colored pencil and China ink on paper. Galerie Bartsch & Chariau, Munich.

MASQUE

From 1959 to 1963, Saul Steinberg collaborated with Inge Morath. She photographed the masks he produced from ordinary paper grocery bags. The photos are always carefully composed and portray an individual or a group, often presented in a real interior, in a car or on a beach. It is a play on unveiled or hidden identity.
Le Masque is also the title Steinberg gave to one of his artworks (Paris, Éditions Maeght, 1966).
“A mask is not a portrait but a sort of prototype. It allows you to maintain a permanently optimistic appearance. I use the mask to pose for a photograph. Under the mask, I feel calm, otherwise the camera sends me into a panic.”

Saul Steinberg, Business mask, 1966.
Pencil, colored pencil, ink, gouache and collage on paper.
© Galerie Maeght, Paris

ANIMALS

A fetish animal, a cat with a human face, often crops up in the artist’s drawings. Steinberg portrays it alone or at his side, as a character who accompanies him. Roland Barthes points out that “Steinberg’s images of animals are familiars”, but perhaps it is also because dogs, crocodiles, lions and birds of all types are simplified through the graphic treatment and read like pictograms.

Saul Steinberg, Untitled (Rabbit), 1960.
Ink, colored pencil and collage on paper.
Private Collection, Germany © York von Wittern.

TROMPE-L’ŒIL

In 1949, Steinberg produced his first trompe-l’œil. In the manner of the Surrealists, he drew or completed human figures on the most diverse and banal objects: benches, lamps, chairs, bathtubs and crates. An unexpected life was born from this association; everyday objects found a face. In the 1970’s, Steinberg sculpted false artists’ and writers’ tables in wood. They included pencils, pens, pencil boxes, books… He describes them as “caricatures of museums”, of his own museum.

Saul Steinberg, The Museum, 1969.
Oil and Mixed techniques on table.
Paola Ghiringhelli Folon Collection. Courtesy Il Chiostro Saronno.
© Claudio Balestrini.

ARCHITECTURE

Before the war, Saul Steinberg studied architecture in Milan, Italy. This training shaped his vision. In many of his drawings, there are views of cities, facades of houses, complex modern architecture and mapped geographies.
He remained fascinated by architecture and the meticulous work undertaken by the architect at his drawing board.

Saul Steinberg , Main Street, 1953.
Ink and watercolour on paper.
Courtesy Galerie Claude Bernard, Paris. Photo : GCB/Losi

AMERICA

From 1939 onwards, Steinberg fled from anti-semitism and fascism in Europe, and the United States gave him refuge in 1941. His dream of freedom was undoubtedly an American one.
However, America was also a land of contradictions. Steinberg did not hesitate to criticize American society and its symbols: consumerism, the atmosphere of overcrowded cities, sophisticated American ladies, big convertible automobiles, society events and Parties…
Steinberg described this American universe in a huge cycle of panels commissioned for the Brussels World Fair in 1958.

CITY

The line explains, defines, details through accumulation, or on the contrary the absence of details (ellipsis), the identity of the city: the anonymity of crowds, the isolation of the individual, the disparate style of the architecture, finally facing the observer with his own universe.

MoMA

In 1946 onwards, the Museum of Modern Art in New York exhibited Steinberg next to Robert Motherwell, Mark Tobey and Isamu Noguchi. This fame in the art scene opened American and European museum and gallery doors to him. He also collaborated in advertising, theatre (Cocteau), movies (Alfred Hitchcock, Vincente Minelli) and interior design. However, few European museums acquired his artworks.
Today, many draughtsmen refer to Steinberg as one of the major figures of 20th century illustration.
Jean-Jacques Sempé, Ronald Searle, Tomi Ungerer, and more recently, Sergueï, Philippe Geluck and Christian Antonelli are the direct “heirs” of his line and his universe.

Ronald William Fordham Searle,
Hotel Street Honolulu, 1965. Coloured ink washes on card.
Musée Tomi Ungerer, Strasbourg. © Ronald Searle. Photo : M. Bertola

VIOLON

Steinberg liked music and the violin in particular. He himself owned two or three. He was friends with the composer Igor Stravinsky to whom he dedicated the drawing (Untitled) Vera in the Shower (1946). In 1967, the Seattle theatre commissioned four decors for the ballet and vocal work The Soldier’s Tale by Stravinsky. In the drawing (Untitled) Igor Stravinsky and cat (1953), Steinberg pays homage to his composer friend: a soldier with a baton conducts an imaginary orchestra. At his feet there is a cat and some chicks, all placed on real music paper. A nod and a wink to the title of the piece by Stravinsky and perhaps to the composer himself who, as in the drawing, had a moustache.