Drawing in The New Yorker, November 30, 1963
Saul Steinberg, the pre-eminent cartoonist of the 20th century, specialized in high-I.Q. humor. In an age when cartoons were populated by henpecked husbands and conniving wives in hair curlers, he found his inspiration in the unlikely realm of philosophical inquiry. Long associated with The New Yorker, he once filled four pages of the magazine with a field of hand-drawn question marks.
Mask, 1959-62. Crayon and pencil on brown paper bag, 14 5/8 x 7 ¾ in. The Art Institute of Chicago; Gift of The Saul Steinberg Foundation
His best-known work was perhaps too famous. He complained about being known as “the man who did that poster.” He was referring, of course, to “View of the World From 9th Avenue,” his myopic, Manhattan-centric map that was scaled and skewed to capture the interior cartography of New Yorkers, where places like Kansas City and China do not exist except as dots in the irrelevant beyond.
front cover
View of the World From 9th Avenue Cover of The New Yorker, March 29, 1976.
Cover of The New Yorker, April 2, 1960.
Mask, 1959-62. Crayon and pencil on brown paper bag, 14 5/8 x 7 ¾ in. The Art Institute of Chicago; Gift of The Saul Steinberg Foundation
Group Portrait with Masks (from the Mask Series with Saul Steinberg), 1962. Photograph by Inge Morath, © The Inge Morath Foundation
Mask, 1961. Ink, crayon, and collage on brown paper bag, 15 ¾ x 8 ¼ in. The Saul Steinberg Foundation
Mask, 1959-62. Ink and crayon on brown paper bag, 15 7/8 x 7 7/8 in. The Art Institute of Chicago; Gift of The Saul Steinberg Foundation
Mask, 1959-62. Ink and crayon on brown paper bag, 14 ¾ x 8 ¼ in. The Art Institute of Chicago; Gift of The Saul Steinberg Foundation
Following quickly upon the cut-paper figures in The Americans was another Steinberg invention. Between 1959 and 1963, he produced paper-bag masks with an array of social species, made famous through the photographs taken by Inge Morath of the artist and his friends wearing the masks in various settings.35 The idea of disguise is central to Steinberg’s art. In the world as he saw it, everyone wears a mask, whether real or metaphorical. People invent personas through makeup, facial expression, hairstyles, and these facades become who they are. “The mask,” Steinberg wrote, “is a protection against revelation.”
Small Family Group, Chelsea Hotel (from the Mask Series with Saul Steinberg), 1962. Photograph by Inge Morath, © The Inge Morath Foundation
Views of Paris, 1946-49. Silk textile for Patterson Fabrics. The Saul Steinberg Foundation.
Paris Opera, c. 1950-53. Screen print on paper for Greeff Fabrics. Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York; Gift of Mrs. Howard Adams.
Aviary, c. 1950-51. Screen print on paper for Piazza Prints. Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York; Gift of Harvey Smith and Benjamin Piazza.
Advertisement for D’Orsay Perfume, 1946.
His elegant line and imaginative conceptions brought him many offers from the commercial world. Textile manufacturers and advertising agencies wanted his by-now famous style to sell their products. Although he disliked commercial work, it paid well, and in the 1940s and beyond Steinberg was contributing to the support of his parents and his sister’s family, first in Bucharest and then in France. His practice was to demand high fees for such work, the remuneration tempering his aversion. Thus he designed textiles for Patterson Fabrics, New York, also printed as wallpaper for the company’s affiliate, Piazza Prints; at least one other design was produced by Greeff Fabrics. Commissions from advertising agencies arrived as early as 1943, when Steinberg had been in the US for barely a year. Many of the ads were published in The New Yorker, as well as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Fortune, Time, and other mass-market journals. Sometimes he added collage elements, rubber stamps, or reused or adapted earlier ink drawings;17 elsewhere, he created a new line drawing for an ad that often combined the line work with a photograph of the client’s product—alone or integrated into a Steinbergian conceit.
Advertisement for Emerson television, 1955.