May 3, New York City Mayor’s Award of Honor for Arts and Culture.
July, spends three days at a Zen retreat in upstate New York. “Sat in the lotus position,” he tells Aldo Buzzi, “along with small group for 4-5 hours per day. 3 days of silence!—the best part.”
Around this time, begins to produce what he calls “ex-voto” drawings, with thoughts and memories from the past explained in handwritten captions.
Ex-voto, after 1983. Pencil on paper, 10 ¾ 14 in. Saul Steinberg Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Caption: “I talk to my nose about childhood. My nose remembers odors from times when I was too young to understand that I was memorizing. ‘That was rosemary,’ he tells me. Or, remember the pine forest in August 1924? How about that other odor. Mushrooms! he answers.”Ex-voto, after 1983. Ink and crayon on paper, 11 x 14 in. Saul Steinberg Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Caption: “In winter when the border shrubs lose their leaves dogs cross my land in a diagonal shortcut. Trespass! I tried to hit one with a potato. He brought it back to me. Good dog! Tears came to my eyes. I was born in a country where the gesture of throwing a rock will send a dog squealing in terror.”Ex-voto, after 1983. Colored pencil and pencil on paper, 11 x 14 in. Saul Steinberg Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Caption: “Giacometti’s face was roughly creased by deep lines horizontal vertical and diagonal. The color was often unhealthy. The hairdo was exploding steel woo. In repose he looked angry. But when he liked something a smile of infinite kindness illuminated and transformed his face. (He had also an unexpected resemblance to Colette.)”
A later ex-voto lacks a caption, but refers to an experience described to Aldo Buzzi in this year: “Early in the morning, then, I’m on the bicycle to Amagansett, all of it uphill, and for a little bit along the ocean, etc. The return trip, downhill, much quicker. I wear a plastic helmet due to the danger from local yokels in their trucks, who hate cyclists and drive too fast and too close. In a red Italian jersey! Quite a spectacle.”
Ex Voto Aug 31 1992, 1992. Photocopy with graphite, crayon, and pastel on paper, 14 7/8 x 10 5/8 in. Saul Steinberg Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.Steinberg with his bicycle, Amagansett, 1980s-early 1990s. Saul Steinberg Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
Dal Vero, a limited edition book with text by John Hollander, published by the Library Fellows of the Whitney Museum of American Art. He describes it as “a so-called rare book, for book lovers, printed with the utmost care, I hope….Something for collectors, in other words, which will make money for the publisher….Maybe it will come out well.” Dal Vero contains drawings from life made in Amagansett, mostly of Sigrid, but some of his niece Daniela Roman, Aldo Buzzi, and other visitors. The works reflect the life drawings he had begun to make in the later 1970s, though a few are earlier.
Daniela Roman in Amagansett, August 19, 1979. Pencil and crayon on paper, 14 ½ x 16 ½ in. Private collection. Included in Dal Vero.Untitled (Seated Woman), April, 1980. Pencil and colored pencil on paper, 14 x 17 in. The Saul Steinberg Foundation. As reproduced in Dal Vero.
