Saul Steinberg:
1958 The Americans
For the 1959 Expo in Brussels, Steinberg's assignment was to create a “montage of the paraphernalia employed by Americans in every-day life.”The Americanswas conceived for the foyer of the huge circular structure designed by Edward Durell Stone.
Steinberg liked the organisers’ suggestion to use enlarged black-and-white drawings as a surface, so before the fair, he sent some of his drawings to be enlarged photographically. In Brussels, the prints were affixed to freestanding walls. This was his “décor,” where his bizarre cast of characters would reside. He envisioned the settings as akin to dioramas in natural-history museums.
Once he was on site, he began the process of montage. He added to the walls brown-paper cutouts, wallpaper fragments, handmade paper, newspaper comics, and other pieces in various shapes and hues, creating a stunning, inventive panorama of America, from small-town Main Street to big-city cocktail party.
“We are not going to Brussels to boast,” he told a journalist. “We want to show how we really are. There are few people who can afford to grin a little bit at themselves. We can.”
His nuanced sensibility didn’t mesh with the populist idea of great American art at that moment, and the mural didn’t make much of a splash. Some reviewers took pot-shots at The Americans;most ignored it completely. Stone’s pavilion, deemed an architectural triumph, made the cover of Time magazine.Steinberg’s art was left out of the Official United States Guidebook. After efforts to place the mural in an American museum after the fair fizzled, the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique agreed to acquire it so it wouldn’t be destroyed. Since the 1990s, two scenes, Drugstore and Cocktail Party, have hung in the museum’s restaurant. The rest have rarely been shown.
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1958 The Americans
"Baseball" |
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1958 The Americans
"California, Florida and Texas" |
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1958 The Americans
"California, Florida and Texas"
detail |
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1958 The Americans
"California, Florida and Texas"
detail |
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1958 The Americans
"Cocktail Party" |
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1958 The Americans
"Cocktail Party"
detail |
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1958 The Americans
"Cocktail Party"
detail |
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1958 The Americans
"Downtown-Big City" |
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1958 The Americans
"Downtown-Big City"
detail |
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1958 The Americans
"Downtown-Big City"
detail |
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1958 The Americans
"Drugstore - Small Town" |
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1958 The Americans
"Drugstore - Small Town"
detail |
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1958 The Americans
"Drugstore - Small Town"
detail |
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1958 The Americans
"Farmers - Middle West" |
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1958 The Americans
"Farmers - Middle West"
detail |
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1958 The Americans
"Farmers - Middle West"
detail |
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The Americans
"Main Street - Small Town" |
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The Americans
"Main Street - Small Town"
detail |
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The Americans
"Main Street - Small Town"
detail |
* * * * *
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1959 Motels and Highway
pen and black inks, with black crayon, on ivory paperboard 56 x 76.3 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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1959 Saul Steinberg Stops for the Night
Fortune magazine June 1959 |
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1959 Saul Steinberg Stops for the Night
Fortune magazine June 1959 |
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1959 Saul Steinberg Stops for the Night
Fortune magazine June 1959 |
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1959 Speech
ink, pencil, conté crayon and rubber stamps on paper 38.1 x 50.8 cm
The Saul Steinberg Foundation |
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1959 The New Yorker
January 17 1959 |
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1959 Untitled
ink on paper 36.8 x 58.4 cm
Saul Steinberg Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University |
1959-62 Masks:
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1959-62 Mask
brush and black inks, over graphite, with white gouache, on cut brown paper bag 33 x 19.2 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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1959-62 Mask
brush and purple crayons, over graphite with erasing, and white gouache, on cut brown paper bag 26.6 x 19.4 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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1959-62 Mask
crayon and coloured pencil on brown paper bag 37.1 x 19.7 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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1959-62 Mask
ink and crayon on brown paper bag 37.8 x 20.9 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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1959-62 Mask
ink and crayon on brown paper bag 40.3 x 20 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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1959-62 Mask
marker, coloured pencil and pencil on brown paper bag 33.6 x 19.4 cm
The Saul Steinberg Foundation |
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1959-62 Mask
marker, coloured pencil, crayon and pastel on brown paper bag 26.9 x 21.2 cm
The Saul Steinberg Foundation |
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1961 Mask
pen and brush and black ink, with black and green crayon, over black pencil, with cut-and-pasted brown and white paper collaged elements, on brown paper bag 40 x 21 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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1962 Mask
oil and pastel on brown paper bag, in plexiglass box 28.6 x 21 x 14 cm |
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1962 The New Yorker
May 5 1962 |
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1962 The New Yorker
May 5 1962 |
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1962 The New Yorker
May 5 1962 |
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1962 The New Yorker
May 5 1962 |
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1962 The New Yorker
May 5 1962 |
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1962 The New Yorker
May 5 1962 |
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1962 The New Yorker
May 5 1962 |
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1962 The New Yorker
May 5 1962 |
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1962 The New Yorker
May 5 1962 |
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1962 The New Yorker
May 5 1962 |
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Mask Series
© Photo by Inge Morath |
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Mask Series
© Photo by Inge Morath |
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1962 Mask Series
Photograph by Inge Morath
© The Inge Morath Foundation |
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Mask Series
© Photo by Inge Morath |
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Mask Series
© Photo by Inge Morath |
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Mask Series
© Photo by Inge Morath |
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Mask Series
© Photo by Inge Morath |
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Mask Series
© Photo by Inge Morath |
