More directly revealing than previous works, more openly autobiographical, are the captioned “ex-voto” drawings Steinberg began to produce in the 1980s. Retrospective in character and quickly drawn, they record thoughts and memories from the past, explained in handwritten captions—what he called in one caption, “film exposed 60 years ago and only now developed and printed.”68
Ex-voto, after 1983. Pencil on paper, 10 ¾ x 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 rough creased by deep lines horizontal vertical and diagonal. The color was often unhealthy. The hairdo was exploding steel wool. 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.)”Ex-voto, after 1983. Pencil and pencil on paper, 10 3/4 x 14 in. Saul Steinberg Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Caption: “Seeing the Angelus by Millet – The original, the real painting at a large and melancholy retrospective of Millet at the Grand Palais in Paris.”
A later ex-voto lacks a caption, but refers to an experience described to Aldo Buzzi in a letter of July 20, 1983: “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.
These ex-votos were never exhibited or published. What Steinberg did publish, in 1983, was a different kind of autobiographical imagery: naturalistic drawings from life made in his Amagansett house, mostly of Sigrid Spaeth, but some of his niece, Daniela Roman, his close friend Aldo Buzzi, and other visitors. The book appeared under the title Dal Vero, a limited edition with text by John Hollander, issued by the Library Fellows of the Whitney Museum of American Art. The works reflect the drawings Steinberg had begun to make in quantity in the later 1970s. They too had never been exhibited or published and looked nothing like what his admirers were accustomed to seeing. In a July 12, 1983 letter to Buzzi, he described 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.”
Daniela Roman in Amagansett, August 19, 1979. Pencil and crayon on paper, 14 ½ x 16 ½ in. Private collection.Watching TV, 1979. Pencil, colored pencil, crayon, and collage on paper, 13 ¾ x 16 ½ in. New York Public Library; Gift of The Saul Steinberg Foundation.Sigrid and Buzzi, 1980. Colored pencil and pencil on paper, 13 ¼ x 16 ¾ in. Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, Grande Brera, Milan, Italy.Wicker Divan, 1979. Pencil, colored pencil, and conté crayon on paper, 13 ¾ x 16 ½ in. New York Public Library; Gift of The Saul Steinberg Foundation.
In the later 1980s, Steinberg revisited the subject of Los Angeles, which he had first taken up in 1950, while spending the summer there. Los Angeles was, as he wrote to Aldo Buzzi on October 23, 1950, a place where “the reality is too peculiar.”
Original drawing for the portfolio “The Coast,” The New Yorker, January 27, 1951. Exterminator No. 9, 1950, ink on paper, 14 ½ x 11 ½ in. Saul Steinberg Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.Beverly Hills, 1950. Ink and watercolor on paper, 14 ½ x 23 ¼ in. Art Institute of Chicago; Gift of The Saul Steinberg Foundation.
Steinberg’s late-life take on California may have been spurred by visits to Los Angeles in conjunction with his work on a series of prints for Gemini G.E.L. The 1980s drawings have the same wry, acerbic tone as the earlier ones, but now the images are in intense color, with stylized caricatures of architecture and landscape, exaggerated forms, and a sometimes cartoonish style. Together they read as an extravagant, tacky wonderland, what Joel Smith described as “idylls of a lush, otherwordly Southern California.”68A
Pasadena, 1989. Crayon and watercolor on paper, 18 x 24 in. Private collection.Pomona, 1989. Crayon, watercolor, and pencil on paper, 23 x 29 in. Private collection.Canyon Drive, Beverly Hills, 1989. Colored pencil, pencil, and watercolor on paper, 22 7/8 x 28 7/8 in. Private collection.Malibu, 1989. Crayon and watercolor on paper, 23 x 29 in. Private collection.Moonlight in Brentwood, 1990. Crayon and watercolor on paper, 23 x 29 in. Private collection.Santa Barbara, 1989. Crayon and watercolor on paper, 23 x 29 in. The Pace Gallery, New York
A critical event of the 1980s was Steinberg’s departure from The New Yorker. The magazine was sold, and in 1987 the new owner fired William Shawn, Steinberg’s friend and long-time editor; along with other contributors, he withdrew in protest. It would be five years before he resumed his contributions—first with cover designs submitted before 1985, then, in the 1990s with drawings for covers or inside portfolios taken or developed from his files.69 In the latest of them, one can sometimes see Steinberg’s aging hand grow looser as he applied pen—or pencil or crayon or marker or pastel or watercolor—to the page.
Original drawing for The New Yorker cover, April 25, 1994. USA, 1993-94. Pencil and crayon on paper, 14 x 12 1/8 in. Saul Steinberg Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.Fortune, Fame, Power, 1984. Pencil, colored pencil, and crayon on paper, 22 3/8 x 15 ¼ in. Private collection. Originally published in The New Yorker, March 14, 1994 in the portfolio “Onward.”Untitled, 1988. Pencil, crayon, and colored pencil on paper, 14 x 11 in. Saul Steinberg Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Originally published in The New Yorker, March 14, 1994 in the portfolio “Onward.”Cover of The New Yorker, November 20, 1995.Soho Kiss, 1985. Pencil and crayon on paper torn from sketchbook, 11 x 14 in. Saul Steinberg Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Originally published in The New Yorker, February 20-27, 1995, in the portfolio “Couples.”Original drawing for The New Yorker cover, January 6, 1997. 2000, 1996. Pencil, ink, watercolor, crayon, and collage on paper, 21 ½ x 14 1/8 in. Morgan Library & Museum, New York; Gift of The Saul Steinberg Foundation.Cover of The New Yorker, March 9, 1998.Drawing published in The New Yorker, February 22-March 1, 1999. Whereabouts unknown. This is the last drawing published in the magazine in Steinberg’s lifetime.
In Steinberg’s last decade, bouts of depression and a thyroid cancer scare stymied his creative energies. Sigrid Spaeth committed suicide in 1996; in early May 1999, he was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer, from which he died on May 12.
