Chapter fifteen: the draftsman-laureate of Modernism

“Your principal fear, I think”: HS to ST, n.d. but internal evidence suggests 1954, YCAL, microfilm reels 144–45.

It was more than “a point of honor”: ST to HS, “Wednesday evening,” internal evidence suggests late May 1952, on Hyde Park Hotel stationery, AAA. In his “Week in Review, 1952,” YCAL, Box 3, ST notes “June 9: Boston.” ST never specified what the Boston commission was, but there are several references that suggest it was for a department store mural that was never realized. In ST to AB, January 17, 1952, he refers to “a huge mural” he is doing. Astragal [“Notes and Topics” columnist], “Drawing the Crowds,” Architects’ Journal [London], May 8, 1952, p. 565: “At the end of this month he is hurrying back to America to do a mural in a Boston department store.” “P Is for Prosciutto,” Time, February 11, 1952, p. 70: “Current Steinberg projects incude a 400-foot mural for a Boston store.” The article’s title refers to an ABC booklet ST made for Claire Nivola when she was four years old. It is another example of ST’s inventions, as in her book the letter C is for Cagliari, one of the three principal cities in Sardinia (her father’s birthplace), and the P is for Picasso, who is depicted standing with one foot on and holding a sword that passes through the Louvre, which is small and on its side and which has blood pouring from a wound. E‑mail from Claire Nivola, October 23, 2009.

He stayed in New York just long enough: Jerome Beatty, October 6, 1955, wrote on behalf of Collier’s Magazine to ask if it could buy the drawings because TNY never published them. He also wanted to discuss ST’s working directly for Collier’s, but nothing came of it.

Hedda went with him: Three letters in YCAL, Box 56: to the reservations manager, Hotel Sherman, July 1, 1952, allowing ST and HS to occupy the room several days before the Republican convention began; from Harding T. Mason, associate editor, TNY, asking readers for assistance to ST in covering the convention; from Harding T. Mason, July 17, 1952, asking the same for coverage of the Democratic convention.

“I must have seen 200 films”: ST to AB, November 30, 1952, SSF.

Between the United States government: Daniel Bueno, “Saul Steinberg e o Brasil: sua passagem pelo pais, publicacoes e influencia sobre artistas brasileiros” (Saul Steinberg and Brazil: his time in the country, publications and influence on Brazilian artists), Revista de Historia da Arte e Arqueologia no. 10 (July–December 2008): 126. Bueno, on pp. 129–30, writes that Bardi’s original idea was not realized although ST filled several sketchbooks with Brazilian scenes, YCAL sketchbooks 3179 and 3201. Only two drawings were published: a hotel in Belém appeared in Saul Steinberg (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art), text by Harold Rosenberg; and a drawing of Recife appeared in The Passport, 1954. I wish to thank Eoin and Maeve Slavin for providing me with a copy of the 2011 exhibition catalogue, Saul Steinberg: As aventuras da linha, Roberta Saraiva, ed. (São Paulo: Instituto Moreira Salles), 2011.

“invented a new world”: Bueno, Saul Steinberg e o Brasil, pp. 127–28.

“You could stand a matchstick”: Flavio Motta, “Steinberg no Brasil,” Habitat (São Paulo) no. 9 (1952): 17.

“His bottle-end glasses”: Ibid., p. 17; Pietro Bardi, Outros textos, collected papers in MASP; both quoted in Bueno, “Saul Steinberg e o Brasil,” pp. 128–29.

When they went to stay in the House of Glass: ST to AB, September 26, 1952; S:I, p. 256; Bueno, “Saul Steinberg e o Brasil,” p. 129.

“tropical Bucharest”: ST to AB, September 26, 1952.

He made drawings of these: Among them Salvador, Manaus, Amazonas, Petropolis, Bahia, Belém, and Recife. Many are in YCAL, Sketchbook 3201; Manaus is 4454.

He needed thirty drawings: ST, datebook, November 21, 1952, YCAL, Box 3, Folder “Appointment Books 1951–52.” His prices ranged from $250 to $300 for each of the thirty.

He had not done any lucrative work: The container corporation was not identified by name in YCAL, Box 56, and according to SSF it was never realized.

“The general feeling … is that”: Hallmark Cards to ST, June 6, 1952, YCAL, Box 56.

The incident was not resolved: Hall to ST, June 9, 1952; Wheeler to Hall, June 16, 1952; Wheeler to Hall, June 30, 1952; all in YCAL, Box 56.

Quite often Steinberg’s name was dangled: By the time of the 1978 WMAA retrospective, his collectors included Billy Wilder, Claude Bernard, Ivan Chermayeff, Max Pahlevsky, Ernst Beyeler, Eugene Meyer, Carter Burden, Charles Benenson, Richard Anuszkiewicz, Warner Leroy, and Gordon Bunshaft. From “List of Titles, Dates, and Owners,” HR/Getty, Box 45.

“marketable mills”: This information comes from an interview with Eleanor Munro, May 31, 2007, and from a conversation with HS immediately afterward on the same date.

If one of them made a slightly barbed comment: Multiple letters from Solomon Steinberg, Jacques Ghelber, Sylvia Haimovici, R. Marcovici, and Sali Marcovici, all late 1953, Romanian letters, YCAL.

And as his feelings of civic responsibility deepened: ST told AB he was “defeated by Ike” when Eisenhower won the presidential election; November 13, 1952, SSF. A telegram from Nathan Straus invited him to be on television for a benefit for Mayor Robert Wagner along with Senator Nicholas Lehman, FDR Jr., Averell Harriman, and others. His uncatalogued papers at YCAL hold many requests from 1952 on from Jewish charities, organizations, and congregations, to all of which he gave generously.

Because more than half were small: ST to Louis Gabriel Clayeux (Maeght’s chief administrator), February 4, 1953, copy SSF. A complete list of works in the show is in Derrière le Miroir, no. 53–54, March–April 1953 (Paris: Editions Pierre à Feu, Maeght Editeur).

Maeght planned to dedicate an edition: I am grateful to Mary Lawrence Test, who explained that in actuality, the lithographs were offset lithographs (reproductions), and in France it was not necessary to make the distinction between the offset lithographic process and original lithographs.

“eating chicken, drinking highballs”: ST to HS, March 2, 1953, AAA.

Then he planned to check: ST to HS, “Monday” 1953, AAA.

During his two months in Paris: Information that follows is from ST, datebook 1952, YCAL, Box 3.

Mme. la Baronne Elie de Rothschild: Baroness Rothschild’s invitation is in the form of a phone message from his Paris hotel, YCAL Box 8, “Correspondence 1953.” After she gave ST her calling card, he began to collect cards from the members of the nobility he met in France, Italy, and other countries, all of which he pasted into a scrapbook now in YCAL. According to HS, interviews, September 9, 2007, and October 24, 2007, he collected them because “he was a snob and wanted everyone to know that he was there, he met them, these little duchessas and other royalty. He was a bit of a braggart, so he told me how many of them he seduced. But what he loved most about the cards was the print. His passion for the cards was not to whom they belonged but to the print they chose to use.”

He went to the home of Meyer Chagall: Jean Hélion to ST, January 4, 1960, YCAL, Box 5, “Correspondence chiefly from 1960”: “I also enjoyed talking to you. I felt that I understood you, and that, wherever we went, we were keeping the same level and would always see each other clearly.”

In the short time he and Steinberg knew each other: The uncatalogued YCAL boxes contain Hélion’s many letters to ST.

On this trip he was especially interested: ST to HS, “Hotel de Crillon, Sunday 8,” internal evidence suggests May 1953, AAA.

“beautiful and civilized city”: ST to HS, May 24, 1953, AAA.

“terrible”: Still, he immortalized the trip by making wooden furniture representations of the hotel rooms, among them the Konak in Istanbul, where he stayed from May 24 to May 28, 1953. He remembered the rooms thirty years later in the 1980s, when he made three that were featured in a show at Pace Gallery, January 11–February 9, 2008: SSF works 7252, 6300, and 6328. YCAL sketchbook 3146 is a record of the Athens-Istanbul trip; some of the drawings from this trip appeared in Harper’s Magazine, February 1956, others in TNY, and still others in The Passport.

The hardest part of the work: ST to HS, on stationery of Hotel de Crillon, “Friday,” (probably early June) 1953, AAA.

“settle a book or two”: ST to HS, on stationery of Hotel France et Choiseul, n.d. (June 1953), AAA.

He was actually relieved: Daniel Keel to ST, June 1, 1953, YCAL, Box 8. Keel’s firm, Diogenes Verlag in Zurich, had just bought the German rights for All in Line and taken an option for The Art of Living and all forthcoming books. Further correspondence between ST, Keel, and various American publishers and ST’s lawyer, Alexander Lindey, show the difficulties that arose in Germany over rights, permissions, and copyright between Rohwolt and Diogenes.

As he had left instructions: ST to “Mlle. Claudine,” n.d., 1953. She was in charge of handling accounts at the gallery and was following his instructions to settle his account of F Fr 13,980 with a French rare-book seller, and to send the rest, the sum of 517,918 francs, to Moritz Steinberg.

Once again the commercial work interfered: Correspondence relating to this show is in YCAL, Box 7.

his lawyer had to prepare an affidavit: ST to AB, November 30, 1953, and December n.d., 1953. Documentation concerning “In the matter of the application of Architect dr. Aldo Buzzi for a non-immigration visa to the U.S. for approximately 3 months” is in YCAL, Box 8, “Correspondence 1954.” ST affirms that he will support AB and that his average gross salary for the previous five years was $25,000 except for 1952, when he and HS earned $30,000.

He chose, for example, cartoons: John I. H. Baur, ABC for Collectors of American Contemporary Art, with drawings by ST, distributed by the American Federation of Artists through Princeton Press, New York, 1954; E. H. Gombrich, the 1956 Mellon Lectures, Bollingen Series, Princeton University Press. Correspondence with William McGuire, YCAL, Box 8, indicates that it was he, not Gombrich, who made the request.

“There must be an area”: James Geraghty to ST, November 10, 1954, YCAL, Box 8, “Correspondence 1954.”

It was frustrating to take time away: Lee Lorenz, interview, September 12, 2007; Fred Model, interview, September 24, 2007; IF, interview, October 12, 2007; Roger Angell, interview, May 6, 2008; HS, interviews 2007.

After Cartier-Bresson introduced him: Dominique deMenil to ST, n.d. but internal evidence suggests spring 1954, YCAL, Box 8, “Correspondence 1954.”

Saul was nervously awaiting: In the ST/AB letters, AB gives the dates of his visit as December 23, 1953, to March 31, 1954; in his datebooks for 1953 and 1954, ST gives AB’s arrival as December 28 and departure as March 19, 1954.

“The main thing”: HS interview, September 9, 1907.

“It was always difficult”: HS, interview, October 11, 2007.

“the second dinner”: HS, interviews, 2007.

Architecture was very much on his mind: In 1958, the Neutras sent their nineteen-year-old son, who was studying briefly in New York, to ST. YCAL, Box 8, “Correspondence 1958.”

Steinberg followed the debates: Invitations from the Saarinens are in YCAL, Box 8.

“the draftsman-laureate”: Girard to ST, correspondence in SSF.

On the subject of architecture: These notes may have been made in connection with the “Built in USA” feature in Art News, February 1953.

“sad, mixed up, scared”: HS to ST, undated letter from YCAL microfilm; internal evidence suggests mid-1954.

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