Three Liberties ©. The Saul Steinberg Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
In the eyes of Saul Steinberg, everything was illuminated. The famed cartoonist for the New Yorker, and also the subject of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center’s touring exhibition, had a knack for calling attention to life’s smallest details and for re-creating our own cultural icons and symbols, calling for us to examine them in a new light. In one cartoon, Three Liberties, he places three versions of Lady Liberty on a New York subway.
Saul Steinberg: Illuminations highlights the artist whose wit and eye for the absurd found a place in the pages and covers of the New Yorker magazine for nearly 60 years. Steinberg created nearly 90 covers, and over 1,200 drawings. Though his cartoons are widely recognized, Steinberg (who was born in Romania and later studied architecture in Milan) was also a muralist, illustrator, card designer, cartographer, and fashion and advertising artist. He also created sculpture, collages, and paper bag masks.
In his cartoons, he used a variety of media ranging from rubber stamps and charcoal to colored pencils and crayons. Techniques at a Party demonstrates this range (as well as his insightfulness and satire), as each partygoer is represented in a different drawing style. Some are crosshatched, others are pointillist and outlined, and the cartoon consists of ink, colored pencil, and watercolor. According to Joel Smith, curator and author of Steinberg at the New Yorker, "Saul Steinberg’s last American museum retrospective...reflected the priorities of a living artist who wanted to be sure the public saw his career as that of a focused, museum-worthy artist...To look at Steinberg’s career in its full duration, depth, and variety is to catch a close-up view of the energies and contradictions of the twentieth century. You might also find yourself smiling a lot."
Steinberg’s first major retrospective concludes its national tour at the FLLAC, where over 100 drawings, collages, and sculptural assemblages are on display through February.
