Saul Steinberg

Saul Steinberg (June 15, 1914 – May 12, 1999) was a Romanian-born American cartoonist and illustrator, best known for his work for The New Yorker.

Biography

Steinberg was born in Râmnicu Sărat, Romania. He studied philosophy for a year at the University of Bucharest, then later enrolled at the Politecnico di Milano, studying architecture and graduating in 1940. During his years in Milan he was actively involved in the satirical magazine Bertoldo.

Steinberg left Italy after the introduction of anti-Semitic laws by the Fascist government.^[1] He spent a year in the Dominican Republic awaiting a U.S. visa; in the meantime, he submitted his cartoons to foreign publications. In 1942, The New Yorker magazine sponsored his entry into the United States, and thus began Steinberg's lifelong relationship with this publication. Through well over half a century working with The New Yorker, Steinberg created nearly 90 covers and more than 1,200 drawings.^[2]

During World War II, he worked for military intelligence, stationed in China, North Africa, and Italy. After the war's end, he returned to work for American periodicals, merging an encyclopedic knowledge of European art with the popular American art form of the cartoon, to pioneer a uniquely urbane style of illustration.^[3] Although best remembered for his commercial work, Steinberg did exhibit his work throughout his career at fine art museums and galleries. He married Romanian born abstract expressionist painter Hedda Sterne in 1944. In 1946, Steinberg, along with artists such as Arshile Gorky, Isamu Noguchi, and Robert Motherwell, was exhibited in the critically acclaimed "Fourteen Americans" show at The Museum of Modern Art.^[2] He has also enjoyed a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1978) and another posthumous one at the Institute for Modern Art in Valencia (IVAM), Spain (2002).^[2]

After Steinberg's death in 1999, the Saul Steinberg Foundation was established in accordance with the artist's will. In addition to functioning as Steinberg's official estate, the Foundation is also a nonprofit organization with a mission "to facilitate the study and appreciation of Saul Steinberg's contribution to 20th-century art" and to "serve as a resource for the international curatorial-scholarly community as well as the general public."^[4] The Foundation has been instrumental in organizing the Saul Steinberg: Illuminations travelling exhibition, which will display original Steinberg works at various museum and galleries around the world, including Fondation Cartier-Bresson, Paris (May 6-July 27, 2008), Kunsthaus Zürich (August 22-November 2, 2008), Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, (November 26, 2008-February 15, 2009) and Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, (March 13-June 1, 2009).^[5] The U.S. copyright representative for the Saul Steinberg Foundation is the Artists Rights Society.^[6]

The "View of the World" cover

The "View of the World" cover

The New Yorker cover (March 29, 1976) “View of the World from 9th Avenue,” has come to represent Manhattan’s telescoped interpretation of the country beyond the Hudson River. The cartoon showed the supposedly limited mental geography of Manhattanites.

The image shows Manhattan's 9th Avenue, 10th Avenue, and the Hudson River (appropriately labeled), while the top half depicts the rest of the world. The rest of the United States is drawn as a square, with a thin brown strip along the Hudson representing New Jersey, the names of five cities (Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Las Vegas, Kansas City, and Chicago) and three states (Texas, Utah, and Nebraska) are scattered among a few rocks for the U.S. beyond New Jersey. The Pacific Ocean, perhaps half as wide again as the Hudson, separates the U.S. from three flattened land masses labeled China, Japan, and Russia.

Cultural legacy

The illustration, depicting New Yorkers' self-image, inspired many similar works, including the poster for the 1984 film Moscow on the Hudson; that movie poster led to a lawsuit, Steinberg v. Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., 663 F. Supp. 706 (S.D.N.Y. 1987), which held that Columbia Pictures violated the copyright that Steinberg held on his work. Another homage was created for the cover of the The Economist newspaper's March 21-27 2009 issue entitled "How China sees the world".

See also

• Musée Tomi Ungerer/Centre international de l’illustration

References

External links

• The Saul Steinberg Foundation, established by the artist's will
• Etchings of Steinberg, from the National Gallery of Art
• The Steinberg Collection from a website owned by The New Yorker
• Texas Parks and Wildlife Department video documenting the recovery of a large Steinberg mural from USTS Texas Clipper
• Berkley, Jon (March 19, 2009). "How China sees the world". The Economist. http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13326106&source=hptextfeature. Retrieved March 24, 2009.  cover art which is a take off of "View of the World from 9th Avenue"