Saul Steinberg
(American, 1914-1999)
colored ink, pencil, and rubber stamps on paper
signed Steinberg and dated (lower right)
19 1/2 x 25 1/2 inches.
Provenance:
The Estate of the Artist, New York
The Saul Steinberg Foundation, New York
Exhibited:
East Hampton, New York, Saul Steinberg: Drawings, Constructions & Objects, The Drawing Room, July 20 - August 26, 2018.
Literature:
Feldman, Jessica R. ,
Saul Steinberg’s Literary Journeys: Nabokov and Joyce (and Many More), Charlottesville and London, University of Virginia Press, forthcoming 2021
Lot Note:
From Jessica R. Feldman, Saul Steinberg’s Literary Journeys: Nabokov, Joyce, and Others (Charlottesville and London, University of Virginia Press, forthcoming 2021):
“Steinberg, like Joyce, delights in combining myths, so that we see, in Niagara Crocodile, the symbolic unfinished pyramid and eye of the Great Seal anchored among the rocks of an Art Deco Niagara Falls, along with rubber-stamped people who are dwarfed by nature and doubly threatened by an upstate crocodile in waiting. The four “seals” that Steinberg rubber-stamps and draws on this sheet, along with the illegible writing, here refer to the power of “administration” with its official documentation that Steinberg abhors—and relates to the crocodile.”
