The Art of Saul Steinberg

NEW YORK—I hadn’t imagined that the maker of one of the most iconic images of New York City would be described as “underrated,” but that is precisely what I heard from three experts about Saul Steinberg, the artist responsible for the constantly reproduced View of the World from 9th Avenue (1976).

Steinberg is currently the subject of two large-scale museum exhibitions (at The Morgan Library & Museum and the Museum of the City of New York), and I was curious to discover how such attention affects the desirability of an artist’s work to collectors.

I quickly discovered that the situation is not as straightforward as one might imagine, particularly with an artist whose reputation is as complex as Steinberg’s.

“He’s been an underrated artist for a very long time, because he’s a very hard artist to categorize. He’s not part of any movement or trend,” said Adam Baumgold, whose gallery on 79th Street is currently staging a Steinberg show that is at least as impressive as the two museum exhibitions.

Marc Glimcher, president of PaceWildenstein, who represent Steinberg’s estate, was even more straightforward: “Steinberg’s in the twilight zone of the market,” he said, “because people are still asking themselves, ‘Is he a cartoonist?’”

A Brief Illustration

Despite the respect that Steinberg enjoyed among his contemporaries (Glimcher is convinced, for example, that Robert Rauschenberg borrowed directly from him) the artist is undoubtedly best known for his cartoon-like magazine illustrations, particularly those he made for The New Yorker. This fact was not only problematic for Steinberg during his lifetime but it now means there exists a great deal of misunderstanding about him as a man and an artist.

“He never thought of himself as a cartoonist,” observed Glimcher. Consequently, Steinberg rarely sold his drawings to the magazines that published them. Instead he would sell them the publication rights and the drawing would come back to his studio.

“He considered the finished work the published page,” explained Joel Smith, curator of both of the current Steinberg museum shows. “The drawing was simply the object he needed to make to produce that final work. It was the equivalent, if you will, to the manuscript of a piece of music.”

As a result, a large number of Steinberg’s New Yorker cover drawings (there were 88 of them) are still owned by the Saul Steinberg Foundation, giving the foundation a powerful position in Steinberg collections. For example, of the near 100 works in the Morgan show, only about a quarter had been drawn from outside of the foundation. Similarly, when PaceWildenstein staged its “Steinberg at the New Yorker” show in 2005, only six of the 55 pieces included were for sale.

Drawing Out the Work

Still, Steinberg is still an eminently collectible artist. “There’s a lot of stuff out there, and maybe this [Morgan] show will help to bring it out of the woodwork,” Smith said. “He was prolific, particularly at the beginning of his career.”

The artist was also—despite his unease with exhibiting his work—willing to sell variants of his published works and even give away his work to friends.

“When a friend wrote to him and said, ‘Saul, this cover is just wonderful,’ sometimes he’d just dedicate it and send it to them,” Smith recalled. “So there are works out there with these dedications on them that were clearly his way of giving something to somebody who meant something to him.”

Yet as Glimcher points out, “to get a great Steinberg is very difficult now.” There is one in Baumgold’s show, Seattle Projects (1981), available for $38,000, but PaceWildenstein currently only has about seven or eight pieces that the Steinberg Foundation has released for sale (and these have been made available specifically to coincide with the current museum exposure).

The Price of Fame

Glimcher also is convinced that collectors’ attitudes toward Steinberg are about to change—which could catapult the artist’s place in the market. “Museum shows always have a significant effect,” he said. “This one [at the Morgan] may have an even more significant effect.”

As he reminded me, at one time Alexander Calder was thought “not quite serious.” But then, “all of a sudden something clicked,” and Calder was thrust into his current position in people’s consciousness as one of the outstanding artists of the 20th century.

In order for such a sea-change to occur for Steinberg, the market will eventually have to come to terms with the artist’s identity. Although Glimcher feels the truth is much more basic.

“Ultimately it doesn’t matter whether or not he was a cartoonist,” he said. “The question is ‘was he good enough?’” To which his only answer is: “Of course he was.”