Saul Steinberg and Philip Guston Together

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.

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:

There are some wonderful Steinberg brown paper bag mask collages:

And hooded figures from Guston:

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

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?

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.