Saul Steinberg is one of my favorite cartoonists of all time. Tonight I found this 1949 first edition of his second book, THE ART OF LIVING, in a Half Price Books for $12. (See my other posts on Steinberg.)
Dig the line work:
The use of collage:
The counterfeit handwriting:
The music notation paper:
Terrific stuff. On cartoonist Mike Lynch’s blog, you can see some great scans of Steinberg’s first book, ALL IN A LINE.
I don’t know whether my husband is a genius or not, but he certainly has a dirty mind.— Nora Barnacle on James Joyce
Woe to you, my Princess, when I come….I will kiss you quite red and feed you till you are plump. And if you are froward, you shall see who is the stronger, a gentle little girl who doesn’t eat enough or a big wild man who has cocaine in his body.— Sigmund Freud, 1884, in a letter to his fiancee, Martha
…when one draws from direct observation, one is choosing what to leave in, what to leave out and even reconstructing elements so that the drawing will “read” better. When one draws from a photograph, the space is flattened, the camera has already selected the lines, shapes, and forms for you. When you are outside drawing a tree, YOU are choosing what is in focus, what is not—there is an exchange between subject and viewer. That is the art.— Frank Santoro
Drawn on the back porch of Bouldin Creek coffeehouse while drinking a $2 beer.
So you’ve left your newspapers and book stuff at home, you need to take some notes, and all I you have is this week’s New Yorker, which your wife hasn’t read yet.
What do you do?
Whip out your Sharpie and defile the “Goings On About The Town.” (No one wants to read about all the great stuff they’re missing by living outside of Manhattan anyways.)
Rinse and repeat.
From a New Yorker article about the French serial imposter Frédéric Bourdin (nicknamed “The Chameleon”):
…he tried to elevate his criminality into an “art.” First, he said, he conceived of…whom he wanted to play. Then he gradually mapped out the character’s biography, from his heritage to his family to his tics. “The key is actually not lying about everything,” Bourdin said. “Otherwise, you’ll just mix things up.” He said that he adhered to maxims such as “Keep it simple” and “A good liar uses the truth.” In choosing a name, he preferred one that carried a deep association in his memory….He compared what he did to being a spy: you changed superficial details while keeping your core intact.
This, too, is what the writer does…
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