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Saul Steinberg: Illuminations
December 1, 2006 - March 4, 2007
Saul Steinberg (1914-1999),
an artist whose magic lit up the pages and covers of The New Yorker
for six decades, is the subject of a major retrospective 
exhibition making its debut at The Morgan Library &
Museum from December 1, 2006, through March 4, 2007. Saul Steinberg:
Illuminations features more than one hundred drawings, collages, and
sculptural assemblages by the artist whom many regard as not only a comic
genius but among the greatest draftsmen of the modern era. The exhibition
is the first full-scale review of his career, from the 1930s to the 1990s,
and was organized by the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College.
(right: Three Liberties, 194951, Ink and watercolor on
paper, 14 x 23 inches (35.6 x 58.4 cm). The Saul Steinberg Foundation,
New York, SSF 6470)
Steinberg is best known for his work for The New Yorker,
including his widely adapted 1976 rendering of a New Yorker's view of the
world. The exhibition brings to light the prolific and diverse activity
for which Steinberg was celebrated from the time he arrived in New York
in 1942. Having studied architecture in Milan, where he gained early fame
as a cartoonist, in America Steinberg became a propagandist, illustrator,
fabric and card designer, muralist, fashion and advertising artist, stage
designer, and tireless creator of image-jammed books. Until his decision,
in the 1960s, to concentrate his efforts on gallery art and The New Yorker,
Steinberg's sleek, barbed, inventive line was seen - and mimicked - everywhere
from highbrow journals to Christmas cards, disseminating the look of modernism
to a popular atomic-age audience.
"The Morgan Library & Museum is delighted to be
the New York City venue for this extraordinary exhibition," said the
Morgan Director, Charles E. Pierce, Jr. "As the range of works in the
show makes clear, Saul Steinberg, with all his abundant gifts - as a draftsman,
an eloquent satirist, and a critic of contemporary culture - was a modern
exemplar of the art of illumination, a history that has its great home at
the Morgan."
The exhibition features rarely seen works from the collections
of private lenders and The Saul Steinberg Foundation. According to curator
Joel Smith, author of the 2005 book Steinberg at the New Yorker (Abrams),
"Saul Steinberg's last American museum retrospective, in 1978, reflected
the priorities of a living artist who wanted to be sure the public saw his
career as that of a focused, museum-worthy figure. Today, what is most fascinating
about Steinberg's art is the vast range he commanded, from High to Low,
from murals to magazines, from caricature to cartography. 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." (right: I Do, I Have, I Am,
1971, Ink, marker pens, ballpoint pen, pencil, crayon, gouache, watercolor,
and collage on paper, 22 3/4 x 14 inches (57.8 x 35.6 cm). The Saul Steinberg
Foundation, New York, SSF 912)
The catalogue for Saul Steinberg: Illuminations,
published by Yale University Press, features an introduction by poet and
critic Charles Simic and an essay, chronology, and object entries by Joel
Smith. The volume's more than three hundred illustrations include color
plates of works in the exhibition and many sketches, never before seen,
from the Saul Steinberg Papers at Yale University. The exhibition is supported
by a grant from The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation.
After the Morgan, the exhibition will travel to the Smithsonian
American Art Museum in Washington D.C. (April 6- June 24, 2007), and the
Cincinnati Art Museum (July 20, 2007-September 20, 2007) before concluding
at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College (November 2, 2007-February
24, 2008).
Concurrent with the Steinberg retrospective at The Morgan
Library & Museum is a thematic exhibition at the Museum of the City
of New York, A City on Paper: Saul Steinberg's New York.
rev. 11/14/06
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