Art, Film, Photography, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Saul Steinberg and Philip Guston Together

I Do, I Have, I Am, 1971
Saul Steinberg
Ink, marker pens, ballpoint pen, pencil, crayon, gouache, watercolor, and collage on paper

I mostly associate the artist Saul Steinberg with the work he did for The New Yorker and the last time I saw an exhibit of his it was the traveling retrospective that came to the Frances Lehman Loeb Gallery at Vassar College in 2007-8.

It was a full-scale survey of his work and quite amazing.

Philip Guston, Plotters 1969

And the last time I saw more than an isolated work by Philip Guston was, I think, the centennial exhibition at the McKee Gallery in NYC in 2013.

A current exhibit on a more modest scale brings both artists together and it makes for an interesting juxtaposition.

The Eyes Wide Open: Saul Steinberg & Philip Guston is at Senior & Shopmaker (210 Eleventh Avenue, 8th Floor, Chelsea, Manhattan) It closes on Saturday so we made it just in time.

Steinberg (1914-1999) and Guston (1913-1980) were friends and there are many points of connection in their work  Both brought a sharp and macabre comic cartoon sensibility to their art and both were satirists and social commentators.

Here are two rooms:

Saul Steinberg 
Albergo Minerva, c. 1961
Lithograph with colored pencil on wove paper.
Philip Guston, “East Side” (1980)

There are some wonderful Steinberg brown paper bag mask collages:

Saul Steinberg Untitled 1959-62 Crayon, colored pencil, and pencil with erasures, with incised foil collage on cut brown paper bag

And hooded figures from Guston:

Philip Guston, “Thoughts” (1970),
Saul Steinberg (American, 1914-1999)
Juke Box, 1968
Lithograph in colors on wove paper
Philip Guston 
View, 1980
lithograph

I loved the Steinberg signature of artist as cat and all those weird and wonderful figures.

Detail from Dancing Couple 1970
Detail from Untitled Kosmos Diner) 1970
Detail from Untitled Kosmos Diner) 1970
Untitled (Kosmos Diner), 1970
Lithograph on Arches paper with colored pencil, ink, crayon, pencil, rubber stamp, and collage

And what is one of Guston’s hoods doing as a turret on a medieval castle? And what is it thinking? Why is the thought bubble blank?

Saul Steinberg, Untitled 1968.

All wonderfully seriously entertainingly playful. And of course you just have to love Steinberg’s materials – paper, embossed seals, ink, brown paper bags, rubber stamps, foil, crayons, pencils.

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