"SAUL STEINBERG: ILLUMINATIONS" par Joel SMITH. Edition Yale University Press, New Haven. 2006. Fort petit in-4, couverture toilée marine sous jaquette illustrée en couleurs. Pages de garde illustrées. 288 pages. Textes en anglais, introduction de Charles Simic, avec de très nombreuses illustrations in-texte et hors texte, 175 en couleurs et 135 en noir & blanc. Ouvrage réalisé dans le cadre de l'exposition éponyme itinérante : The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, du 30 Novembre 2006 au 04 Mars 2007 ; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C., du 06 Avril au 24 juin 2007 ; Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, du 20 Juillet au 20 Septembre 2007 ; Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, du 02 Novembre 2007 au 24 Février 2008.

 

"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 the first comprehensive look at Steinberg's extraordinary contribution to twentieth-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 the artistes native Romania. Joel Smith shows how architectural training and an early rise to fame as a cartoonist in Fascist-era Milan honed Steinberg'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 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 the works featured in this important book."

 

Ref LIL0150