Page 56 - Studio International - February 1967

The symbol

lurking in the

wings

It is no doubt a satisfaction to Saul Steinberg that
the squabbling critics have never succeeded in
classifying his endeavour. They worry about
whether he can be properly called an artist;
whether he is a humourist, a satirist or a mere
cartoonist. To complicate matters, the obvious
trend in the visual arts is for the artist to turn a
thought into an object. Steinberg, sitting in his
Baroque castle of thoughts, is only concerned with
turning an object into a thought. Saul Steinberg
Above
This was made abundantly clear in his two exhibi-
Le Lloyd's 1966
tions at the BETTY PARSONS and SIDNEY JANIS
Collage
galleries. His drawings, watercolours and collages, 151x 231 in.
no matter what their subject matter, inevitably
turn into written thoughts. Left
He writes elegantly, elaborately, tersely or play- View of Nebraska 1966
fully, but he writes. He also draws, of course, and Ink, watercolour, collage
with the inimical line that has won him world- 23 x 29 in.
wide renown—that steel-pen line that wanders so
knowingly over the white abysses, populating
Steinberg's universe. But his drawings irresistibly
metamorphose into writings. Of all Western
draughtsmen, Steinberg is the one who most
expresses the Eastern ideal of the writer-painter.
Many years ago Steinberg explained that line in
a writer's drawing is like the written word: it is to
be seen letter by letter and then translated. He has
adhered to the principle even in his most mystify-
ing calligraphic drawings. He nearly always places
a subject—either himself, another human figure, a
solid object, or an animal—in some recognizable
context, close to a ground line, and then spins out us. The rubber-stamp authority is literally pro- the same technique. His asides in each drawing, no
the line in a diffused pattern that must be gathered posed by the use of real rubber stamps. On the matter how simple in components, are what make
by the reader and translated. other hand, the false documents that have always the drawings elusive and not readily categorizable.
Steinberg's range is considerably broader than is been Steinberg's obsession are less easily inter- To get back to Steinberg's range: there are full
generally conceded. He has perfected several pretable than before. The primer of penmanship watercolours in which a genuine nostalgia for the
manners of discourse over the years, and is always becomes a book of signs, more fitting for the al- nineteenth century's view of moody nature is
adding new figures and metaphors to his lexicon. chemist than the practitioner of visual jokes. offered in purely painterly terms. There is also
At the heart of his style is his old training as an He is still a public diarist, commenting and another kind of nostalgia: that first enunciated by
architectural draughtsman. The enforced cleanli- piercing the appearances he finds in America— Chirico for the meanings entombed in old stones
ness of the architect's board, the incisive quality of there is a series of extremely evocative portraits of that have got themselves together into architecture.
line, the use of symbol to suggest a whole, and the states, for instance—but he is also the artist cross- Then there are the golems that haunt Steinberg in
coded references to solids, appear again and again examining himself. The familiar figure of the artist their various forms, the most notable being the
in his drawings. The latest plays on symbology— spewing the line that draws itself is reticulated in a dragon. Parodies occur frequently; latterly, Stein-
those animated triangles, rectangles and squares hundred complicated ways in the new work. berg has parodied modern art, basing his com-
that become personages in some of his more- More than ever, Steinberg concentrates on the mentary on the cubist rules and breaking them
abstract renderings—refer back again to the earliest. visual footnote. I have always seen a strong affinity with subtle designs. Finally, there are the masks—to
From the beginning, Steinberg's wit (a word between Steinberg's visual writing and Nabokov's my mind the least interesting of his pursuits.
that is somewhat worn, but in his case still service- very verbal writing. Nabokov ridicules the footnote
able) was turned against holy cows and what he scholar in 'Pale Fire', but he becomes the butt of his Conundrums of quite a different order overtake
used to call 'rubber stamp authority'. In his 1966 own jokes in his essay on Pushkin, in which the the visitor to Ad Reinhardt's large exhibition at
drawings and watercolours, the European, much footnotes are more extensive than the text. (Is he the JEWISH MUSEUM. As next in the line of American
more conversant with the terrors of bureaucracy serious? Is his tongue in his cheek? I don't know.) charisma figures, Reinhardt has had a lion's share
than most Americans (we have no cartes d'identité), Similarly, Steinberg attacks the niggling detail of of publicity in the past few months, making his
is still there, but has become more literal, more like bureaucratic procedure in homeopathic doses of