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Saul Steinberg: Illuminations

saul steinberg joel smith charles simic

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Best known for his barbed and brilliant art for The New Yorker, Saul Steinberg (1914–1999) did much more. He executed public murals, designed fabrics and stage sets, was an inventive collagist and printmaker, and turned his magic touch to the fields of painting, sculpture, advertising, and even wartime propaganda. This is the first comprehensive look at Steinberg’s extraordinary contribution to 20th-century art, which was that of a modern-day illuminator, putting word and image in play to create art that spoke to the eyes, and minds, of readers.
An introduction by poet Charles Simic tracks the origins of Steinberg’s darkly comic sensibility in the “Balkan bazaar” of his native Romania. Joel Smith shows how architectural training and an early rise to fame as a cartoonist in Fascist-era Milan honed the artist’s gift for subtle graphic invention, and explores why one of the most visible, prolific, potent, and cosmopolitan careers in postwar American art has so thoroughly evaded serious study. Tracing the evolving motives that underlie Steinberg’s multi-layered activity, this handsome volume also raises fundamental questions about the historiography of modernism and the vexed status of “the middlebrow avant-garde” in an age of museum-bound art.
Previously unseen sketches, documents, and printed matter from the artist’s papers illustrate the essay, career chronology, and entries for 120 objects featured in this important book.

288 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1,2006

This edition

Format
288 pages, Hardcover
Published
November 1, 2006 by Yale University Press
ISBN
9780300115864
ASIN
0300115865
Language
English

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Rating(4.3 / 5.0, 6 votes)
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LordSauronAlfa
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Steinberg escaped from Romania via Italy to New York City, where his inspired doodles adorned the New Yorker throughout its golden years. Flipping through any book by Steinberg is equivalent to sucking on a Vicodin: one is mysteriously happier.

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Elise22kara
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Joel Smith, Saul Steinberg: Illuminations (Yale, 2006)

Among those artists in the stable of The New Yorker, Saul Steinberg may be second only in recognition to Charles Addams. And yet, until 2006, there had never been a major retrospective of Steinberg's work. This book is the companion volume to the exhibition that rectified that oversight, and it is chock-full of drawings and photographs of both Steinberg and his work, along with a ninety-six page biographical essay by Smith. Even if you don't know Steinberg's name, if you saw issues of The New Yorker at any time during the over three decades Steinberg was working for them, you probably know his work. And if you've been a fan all that time, you may still be surprised at how much farther-ranging his work went beyond that. Either way, it's worth checking out. ***
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rotlaust
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Recientemente en un viaje a Estados Unidos, me desviví buscando libros de Steinberg en las librerías. Todos descatalogados. Terminé encargando por Amazon este libro usado y carísimo. No entiendo. No solamente Steinberg es maravilloso, sino que es un fiel representante de la cultura americana a pesar de haber nacido en Rumania. Conseguí Illuminations y me alegré de saber que era el catálogo de una retrospectiva del 2006. Steinberg es muchísimo más que el maravilloso dibujante para The New Yorker y este catálogo lo demuestra. Su sentido del humor es sofisticado pero sencillísimo a la vez. Soy una gran admiradora y no entiendo cómo es tan difícil encontrar libros de Steinberg.
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Sinishi
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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This is a collection emerging out of a 2006 retrospective exhibition of Steinberg's work. Steinberg is useful for comics artists and scholars and historians because he was known as a doodler/cartoonist/comics artist and also from the establishment art world was also known as a "serious" artist (as if the comics were NOT serious, for some reason), who was part of the The New Yorker visual team for decades, and who also exhibited in galleries and museums. He could be silly and serious and political and knew no bounds in what he would attempt, posters, flyers, everything, quick sketches, careful portraits. He was known perhaps equally for his "low brow" comics as he was his "high brow" painting, which tended to pop art and political commentary and satire, but the point is that he helped to break down the distinctions between high and low brow. Really cool guy, who moved from Romania to Milan to study comics and then to NYC.
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Rekushisu
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Brillant exposition by Joel Smith and... well, Steinberg is just a genius. The catalogue in this book is a very accurate search in the paths that this artist draw and wrote.
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