Notes

  • 1 Jean vanden Heuvel, “Straight from the Hand and Mouth of Steinberg,” LIFE, December 10, 1965, p. 66.
  • 2 Iain Topliss, “Complicity: Art and Life of Saul Steinberg,” in Saul Steinberg: The Americans, exhibition catalogue (Cologne: Museum Ludwig, 2013), p. 163.
  • 3 Mario Tedeschini Lalli, “Descent from Paradise: Saul Steinberg’s Italian Years, 1933-1941,” Quest: Issues in Contemporary Jewish History , no. 2, October 2011, online at http://www.quest-cdecjournal.it/focus.php?id=221
  • 4 Saul Steinberg, Lettere a Aldo Buzzi, 1945-1999, ed. Aldo Buzzi (Milan: Adelphi Edizioni, 2002). See also the exhibition catalogue Aldo Buzzi e Saul Steinberg: Un’amicizia tra letteratura, arte e cibo (Sondrio: Galleria Credito Valtellinese; Forte dei Marmi: Villa Bertelli; Milan: Biblioteca Braidense, 2015-16).
  • 5 For Steinberg’s work in Bertoldo and Settebello, see Piervaleriano Angelini, “L’attività italiana di Saul Steinberg,” thesis (Università degli Studi di Pavia, 1981-82) and Paola Puglisi Fossati, “Gli esordi di Saul Steinberg al ‘Bertoldo,'” thesis (Università degli Studi di Milano, 2011-12). On Bertoldo in general, including Steinberg’s contributions: Cinzia Mangini and Paola Pallottino, Bertoldo e i suoi illustratori (Nuoro: Ilisso Edizioni, 1994); Carlotta and Alberto Guareschi, Milano 1936-1943: Guareschi e il Bertoldo (Milan: Rizzoli, 1994); Guido Conti and Giorgio Casamatti, Giovannino Guareschi al “Bertoldo”: Ridere delle dittature, 1936-1943, exhibition catalogue (Brescia: Museo di Santa Giulia, 2008).
  • 6 Tedeschini Lalli, “Descent from Paradise.”
  • 7 Joel Smith, Saul Steinberg: Illuminations, exhibition catalogue (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), pp. 30-32.
  • 8 “Fourteenth Air Force—China Theatre,” The New Yorker, January 15 and February 5, 1944, March 24, 1945; “North Africa,” April 15 and 29, 1944; “Italy,” June 10, July 8 and 29, 1944; “India,” February 24 and April 28, 1945. Some of the drawings were reprinted in Steinberg’s 1945 compilation, All in Line.
  • 9 Joel Smith, Steinberg at The New Yorker (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2005), p. 22.
  • 10 Quoted in Smith, Saul Steinberg: Illuminations, p. 42.
  • 11 Steinberg, “Chronology,” in Saul Steinberg, exhibition catalogue (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1978), p. 235.
  • 12 Saul Steinberg with Aldo Buzzi, Reflections and Shadows (New York: Random House, 2002), p. 86.
  • 13 Smith, Saul Steinberg: Illuminations, pp. 36-37. For Steinberg’s career at The New Yorker, see Smith, Steinberg at The New Yorker.
  • 14 Steinberg’s magazine features are listed in Smith, Saul Steinberg: Illuminations, pp. 269-72.
  • 15 A selection of photoworks appears in the exhibition catalogue Saul Steinberg: The Americans, pp. 154-56, and Saul Steinberg: 100th Anniversary Exhibition (New York: The Pace Gallery and Pace/MacGill, 2014).
  • 16 “Portraits by Steinberg,” Flair, March 1950, and “The City by Steinberg,” Flair, September 1950.
  • 17 In one of the ads Steinberg did for Noilly Prat,  he may have had recourse to a slightly earlier drawing of an artist at work.
    Advertisement for Noilly Prat 1955.
    Advertisement for Noilly Prat 1955.
    Drawing in The New Yorker, February 27, 1954
    Drawing in The New Yorker, February 27, 1954

  • 18 For the venues, see the Chronology on this site and Smith, Saul Steinberg: Illuminations, pp.256-57.
  • 19 Russell Lynes, “Steinberg’s Stuff,” Harper’s Magazine (April 1952), p. 96.
  • 20 Bertoldo artists provided regular features that ridiculed modern art, architecture, furniture, and fashion; see Conti and Casamatti, Giovannino Guareschi al “Bertoldo,” esp. pp. 274-93.
  • 21 Quoted in “Steinberg and Sterne,” LIFE, August 27, 1951.
  • 22 Harold Rosenberg, introduction to Saul Steinberg, exhibition catalogue (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1978), p. 15. For Steinberg’s fingerprint images, see also Smith, Saul Steinberg: Illuminations, p. 124.
  • 23 “Graph paper architecture” was a derisive term commonly used to describe curtain-wall buildings, though it is not known whether the term existed before Steinberg’s first graph paper collages of 1950; see Timothy M. Rohan, “Challenging the Curtain Wall: Paul Rudolph’s Blue Cross and Blue Shield Building,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 66 (March 2007), pp. 87-88.
  • 24 For an overview of Steinberg’s mural projects, see Smith, Saul Steinberg: Illuminations, pp.44-48 and cats. 31 and 37; Melissa Renn, “The Americans Abroad,” in Saul Steinberg: The Americans, pp. 17-21.
  • 25 When the Terrace Plaza Hotel was sold in 1965, Steinberg’s murals were given to the Cincinnati Art Museum. They were restored and exhibited during the Cincinnati venue of Steinberg: Illuminations in 2007.
  • 26 American Export Lines later sold the four ships; three of them were eventually scuttled. Steinberg’s murals went down with the ships. One mural remains, in poor condition and partly covered with wallpaper, having been salvaged by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission. See Smith, Saul Steinberg: Illuminations, p. 239, note 84, for references to contemporaneous publications that reproduce some of the mural sections.
  • 27 The above paragraph is taken in large part from Smith, Saul Steinberg: Illuminations, p. 46. Steinberg described his role in the project in a letter to Aldo Buzzi, June 1, 1949, Lettere a Aldo Buzzi, p. 34.
  • 28 See Smith, Saul Steinberg: Illuminations, cat. 31, for The Line.
  • 29 For a complete set of reproductions of the Triennial drawings, see Drawings for the “Children’s Labyrinth,” 10th Triennale of Milan, 1954, a boxed set of four accordion foldouts (Zurich: Nieves Books, 2014); and Saul Steinberg: As aventuras da linha, exhibition catalogue (Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Moreira Salles; São Paulo: Pinacoteca do Estado, 2011), pp. 160-227.
  • 30 In 2013, the murals were reassembled for an exhibition at the Museum Ludwig, Cologne Saul Steinberg: The Americans. For an analysis of the individual murals and their place in the avant-garde of the 1950s, see Melissa Renn’s catalogue essay, “The Americans Abroad,” pp.15-61.After the Brussels fair closed in 1958, the murals were cut into 84 pieces to facilitate storage, resulting in the present vertical divisions. They are now in the Musée Royaux de Beaux-Arts, Brussels.In 1961, Steinberg executed his last mural project, again on commission from BBPR: the entry way for the Palazzino Meyer on the Via Bigli in Milan. Using the sgraffito technique, he produced an array of enlarged motifs from his contemporaneous drawings. Heavily damaged by humidity, the mural was destroyed when the building was razed in the 1990s.
  • 30A John Gruen, interview for ARTnews, January 19, 1978, typescript, Saul Steinberg Papers, Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Yale University, box 130, folder 2473. For an extended discussion of the mural and the art-viewing theme in Steinberg’s work, see  Sheila Schwartz, “Steinberg regarde les regardeurs”/”Steinberg Views the Viewers,” in Anne Montfort-Tanguy, Valérie Loth, Sheila Schwartz, and Jean-Pierre Criqui, Saul Steinberg: Entre les lignes, exh. cat. (Paris: Centre Pompidou, 2021), pp. 16-22; English edition, Saul Steinberg: Between the Lines (Munich: Prestel Verlag, 2022) ]
  • 31 For a detailed discussion of the history of collage in Steinberg’s work and sources for the quotations that follow, see Renn, “The Americans Abroad,” pp. 25-33.
  • 32 Quoted in Meera E. Agarwal, “Steinberg’s Treatment of the Theme of the Artist: A Collage of Conversations,” senior thesis, Vassar College, December 1972, p. 21.
  • 33 From an interview with Jacques Dupin, January 11, 1978, p. 23, transcription at The Saul Steinberg Foundation, New York.
  • 34 For the tradition of collage in Bertoldo, see Carlotta and Alberto Guareschi, Milano 1936-1943: Guareschi e il Bertoldo, pp. 235-50.
  • 35 See Saul Steinberg: Masquerade. Photographs by Inge Morath (New York: Viking Studio, 2000); Smith, Saul Steinberg: Illuminations, cats. 40, 41.
  • 36 Steinberg’s explanation of his masks is written on a sheet of New Yorker stationery among his papers at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
  • 37 Smith, Saul Steinberg: Illuminations, p. 53.
  • 38 See Smith, Steinberg at The New Yorker for a detailed commentary and reproductions of all Steinberg’s covers.
  • 39 Smith, Saul Steinberg: Illuminations, p. 58.
  • 40 Steinberg, Reflections and Shadows, pp. 74-75; p. 83 for the quotation at the end of the next paragraph.
  • 41 Smith, Steinberg at The New Yorker, p. 36.
  • 42 Smith, Steinberg at The New Yorker, p. 38.
  • 43 From the transcript of “Take 30 in New York,” a television interview with Adrienne Clarkson, Canadian Broadcasting Company, aired January 1968.
  • 44 Steinberg, “Chronology,” in Saul Steinberg, exhibition catalogue (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1978) p. 235.
  • 45 The framed Picasso Steinberg drew on the wall, signed “Picasso” and dated “22,” is similar to a Picasso drawing, Head of a Woman, 1922, now in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv. 1984.433.27. Steinberg probably saw either this drawing or a close kin in reproduction.
  • 46 Steinberg interviewed by Jean Robertson, brochure for the exhibition “Saul Steinberg,” Columbus Museum of Art (Ohio), 1986. In 1963, Steinberg wrote to his friend Aldo Buzzi: “to divert myself I do collages of 1912 that I even sign Braque etc.” (June 17); and (June 20) “I’ve rather enjoyed making myself a very elegant collection of Mondrians and a few cubist collages of Braque, Gris, etc. all done by me and well framed.” Several of these works are owned by The Saul Steinberg Foundation.
  • 47 A group of the stamped sheets from the 1954 appointment calendar were published in Harper’s Bazaar, June 1959, pp. 70-73, as “Saul Steinberg Stamp Collection,” but superimposed on a 1958 calendar from the same company.
  • 48 Quoted by Eli Waldron, Publishers Weekly, July 5, 1973.
  • 49 Quoted in Jeanine Warnod, “En 50 coups de tampon, Steinberg dénonce l’humanité enrégimentée,” Le Figaro, June 18, 1971, and J. Bonnet, “Jeudi, vendredi,” Les lettres françaises, June 23, 1971.
  • 50 Quoted in Jean Robertson, brochure for the exhibition “Saul Steinberg,” Columbus Museum of Art (Ohio), 1986.
  • 51 Smith, Saul Steinberg: Illuminations, p. 170.
  • 52 Steinberg, Reflections and Shadows, pp. 11-12.
  • 53 David Scott, director of the National Collection of Fine Arts, quoted in Mary M.Krug, “Enigmatic Steinberg Discusses Residency,” The Smithsonian Torch (April 1967), p. 3. Steinberg gives his own account of the residency—”the strangest three months of my life”—in Reflections and Shadows, pp. 45-50. See also Smith, Saul Steinberg: Illuminations, p. 166.
  • 54 Steinberg, Reflections and Shadows, p. 49.
  • 55 A group of the drawings was exhibited in 1973; see Steinberg at the Smithsonian: The Metamorphoses of an Emblem, exhibition catalogue (Washington, DC: National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution, 1973) and http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/results/index.cfm?rows=10&q=Saul+Steinberg&page=1&start=0&x=34&y=14
  • 56 Smith, Saul Steinberg: Illuminations, p. 63.
  • 57 Quoted in Meera E. Agarwal, “Steinberg’s Treatment of the Theme of the Artist,” p. 12.
  • 58 Quoted in Vanden Heuvel, “Straight from the Hand and Mouth of Steinberg,” p. 66.
  • 59 See Smith, Saul Steinberg: Illuminations, p. 178, for a more detailed analysis of this drawing.
  • 60 Steinberg, Reflections and Shadows, p. 71.
  • 61 Transcribed from “Take 30 in New York,” interview with Adrienne Clarkson, Canadian Broadcasting Company, aired January 1968.
  • 62 Quoted in Harold Schonberg, “Artist Behind the Steinbergian Mask,” The New York Times Magazine, November 13, 1966, p. 164.
  • 63 For additional comments on Steinberg’s postcard drawings, see Smith, Steinberg at The New Yorker, p. 110, and Steinberg: Illuminations, p. 206.
  • 64 For further discussion of the still life and November 26, 1965, see Smith, Saul Steinberg: Illuminations, pp. 122 and 162.
  • 65 See Smith, Saul Steinberg: Illuminations, p. 182 for Konak.
  • 66 The plan was to transcribe and publish Steinberg’s narration in book form. The book, edited by Buzzi, was published posthumously as Reflections and Shadows.
  • 67 The quote is from an unpublished letter to Buzzi, November 24,1978. For more on Steinberg’s attitude to autobiography, see Tedeschini Lalli, “Descent from Paradise,” pp.314-15. The author also reveals how much Steinberg sugar-coated his verbal recollections, preferring light-hearted accounts to more difficult truths.
  • 68 See Smith, Saul Steinberg: Illuminations, p. 72
  • 69 Smith, Saul Steinberg: Illuminations, pp. 73-74, and Smith, Steinberg at The New Yorker, pp. 46-47, for this phase of Steinberg’s life at the magazine.
  • 70 A recent architectural historian has shown that Steinberg “prepared the ground for Venturi and Scott Brown”; see Emmanuel Petit, Irony or The Self-Critical Opacity of Postmodern Architecture (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2013), pp. 67-69.
  • 71 Quoted in Grace Glueck “The Artist Speaks: Saul Steinberg,” Art in America (November-December 1970), p. 117.
  • 72 Smith, Saul Steinberg: Illuminations, p. 120.
  • 73 See Peter Blake, “Saul Steinberg: Critic Without Words,” Architecture, 88 (September 1999), pp. 106-08; and Francesca Pellicciari, “Critic Without Words: Saul Steinberg el’architettura,” thesis (Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia, 2004-05).Steinberg’s self-appointed role as architectural critic may reflect his experience at Bertoldo as well as his architectural training at the Politecnico. As noted above (note 20 Bertoldo had regular features with sendups of modern architecture, furniture, and fashion.
  • 74 Stephen Spender, “Steinberg in the West,” Encounter, 14 (April 1960), pp. 5-9.
  • 75 Tedeschini Lalli, “Descent from Paradise.”
  • 76 Quoted in Robert Hughes, “The World of Steinberg,” Time, April 17, 1978, p. 96.
  • 77 Given his penchant for art already processed through art, Steinberg did not base the pagodaon real architecture . Rather, it is an adaptation of the designs on Willow Pattern (or Blue Willow) ware, porcelain plates and objects first produced in late 18th-century England for the British market and still sold today; he owned several pieces. Repurposing the artificiality of a decorative Western reading of Chinese architecture is pure Steinberg.Tree Bauhaus recalls one of Steinberg’s famously overarching pronouncements. Looking at Jacopo da Sellaio’s 15th-century painting of St. Jerome Penitent in the Louvre, he said: “Marvelous! See how the trees are trimmed. Architecture first imitated trees, then the trees imitated architecture. Campaniles and minarets were invented by cypress trees”; quoted in Pierre Schneider, “Steinberg at the Louvre,” Art in America (July–August 1967), p. 84.
  • 78 Steinberg, in the 1973 film Du côté de chez les Maeght, with Steinberg and Valerio Adami, produced by Éliane Victor for the Galerie Maeght, Paris. The Smithsonian was made in 1967, while Steinberg was artist-in-residence at the Smithsonian Institution. The collage at lower left is a drawing on Smithsonian stationery, of which he did many during his residency.
  • 79 Steinberg, Reflections and Shadows, pp. 56-57.
  • 80 Steinberg, Reflections and Shadows, pp. 66-67
  • 81 Ian Frazier and Saul Steinberg, Canal Street (New York: Library Fellows of the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1990).
  • 82 Steinberg v. Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., 663 F. Supp. 706 (S.D.N.Y. 1987). See Smith, Saul Steinberg: Illuminations, pp. 70-71, and Smith, Steinberg at The New Yorker (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2005), pp. 41-43.
  • 83 For the sequencing of these drawings, see Smith, Saul Steinberg: Illuminations, pp. 70-71.
  • 84 Smith, Saul Steinberg: Illuminations, pp. 65, 261.
  • 85 Smith, Steinberg at The New Yorker, p. 220. For Autogeography, see also Tedeschini Lalli, “Descent from Paradise,” p. 313; John Ashbery, “Saul Steinberg: Callibiography,” Art News Annual, 36 (1970), p. 58.
  • 86 Joel Smith, brochure for Saul Steinberg: Illuminations, 2008. Steinberg’s words are from a letter to Aldo Buzzi, February 5, 1990.
  • 87 Smith, Saul Steinberg: Illuminations, p. 54, and pp. 54-56 for a more detailed analysis of Steinberg’s critical fortunes.
  • 88 The complexity of Steinberg’s art is also reflected in the media he used. Even within a single work on paper, he would pick up whatever tool he felt would best express the form and idea. It is not unusual to find a drawing executed in four, five, or even six different media, as a glance at any caption list will attest.
  • 89 Smith, Saul Steinberg: Illuminations, p. 56.
  • 90 Harold Rosenberg, in Saul Steinberg, exhibition catalogue (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1978), p. 36.

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