Saul Steinberg: A Biography Part 29

Fred Stafford ... stepped in: Stafford bought the house for HS and it was always in her name. A 1952 agreement shows that ST rented the second floor of the house at 179 East 71st Street to use as a studio from Mr. Frederick Stafford of 521 Park Avenue; YCAL, Box 56, "Correspondence from 1952."

The house was one in a row: The description of the house and how they used it comes from interviews and conversations there with HS throughout 2007.

At the rear, French doors opened: When HS was in her nineties, after suffering a stroke and when she was afflicted with macular degeneration, she used these two rooms as combination bedroom and studio. She kept the second floor for guests and rented the third as a separate apartment.

Throughout the next decade, Steinberg filled the room: Rodman, Conversations with Artists, p. 182.

Saul took over the second floor: ST took the billiard table with him when he left the house in 1960. It eventually ended up in one of the storage sheds on the Nivola property in Amagansett.

He thought he worked better: ST to AB, November 30, 1953, SSF.

"Saul's New Yorker people": HS, interviews, March 28 and April 18, 2007. For a list of friends and guests, see also S:I, p 256, and YCAL, Box 3, ST's appointment books for 1952 and 1953.

"two Irish rabbis": May Tabak Rosenberg to ST, n.d., HR/Getty, Box 12, Folder 7.

"rare gift for inventing": ST, quoted in HR's New York Times obituary, July 13, 1978. Kurt Vonnegut to ST, October 17, 1985, wrote that he remembered ST telling him how much conversations with HR meant to him. In ST's undated reply (internal evidence places it in 1989), he talks about how HR's "friends.h.i.+p continues to make my life tolerable and who in the meantime has become younger than I for he died in '78 age 72 and I am now 75."

Rosenberg was a towering presence: May Tabak Rosenberg, from HR's memorial service.

Steinberg, whose height was just below: HS interview, April 18, 2007. After HR's death, ST hung his photo in what he called "the meditation room" of his 75th St. apartment. It is now in YCAL, Box 50.

Steinberg saw him in New York: ST to AB, March 31, 1952, SSF; ST, appointment book, March 18, 1952, notes a reception for De Sica "at museum"; YCAL, Box 3, Folder "Appointment Books 195152."

"a marvelous guest": This information is from interviews and conversations with HS throughout 2007 and 2008.

One evening he sat glowering: Priscilla Morgan, interview, May 31, 2007.

The energy that Steinberg put into: The Parsons-Janis show was the first of a two-year traveling exhibition in which new works were subst.i.tuted as others were sold. Other venues included the Frank Perls Gallery, Beverly Hills, in December; the London ICA and the Museu de Arte in So Paolo, 1952; Galerie Maeght, Paris, Amsterdam and Dortmund; and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, all 1953. All arrangements were made by Janis. Information is from the exhibition notebook, SSF.

He returned her generosity: Calvin Tompkins, Off the Wall: A Portrait of Robert Rauschenberg (New York: Macmillan, 2005), p. 53.

"I liked her": From a telephone conversation with an unnamed interviewer, November 7, 1985, YCAL, Box 58.

"gossipy and could be a treasure": ST to HS, n.d. but written during the six-day voyage, April 1824, 1952, AAA.

It made him so nervous: Information and all quotes that follow are from ST to HS, May 1, 1952, AAA.

"jittery" days: ST to HS, "Tuesday" and May 4, 1952, AAA.

His consolation was: ST to HS, "Wednesday evening," internal evidence suggests May 21, 1952, on stationery of Hyde Park Hotel, London, AAA.

He found his parents: ST to HS, "Monday," and "Thursday 8," AAA. Information and quotes are from these letters until noted otherwise.

Unfortunately, neither director's ideas: ST to AB, September 26, 1952, SSF.

Otherwise, the Italian trip was disappointing: ST to HS, n.d., on stationery of Hotel Plaza and de France, Nice.

Rogers had several projects in mind: ST to HS, "May 52," on stationery of Hotel France et Choiseul, AAA.

The thirty-eight year old ST, who had never wanted: ST to HS, "Sunday evening," on stationery of Hotel France et Choiseul, internal evidence suggests May 18, 1952. AAA.

"personal letter, silly": ST to HS, "Thursday," internal evidence suggests May 21, 1952, on stationery of Hotel France et Choiseul, AAA.

He tried to explain to Hedda: Smith, S:I, p. 48, notes how ST "certainly heard from readers" and how, in a 1952 memo to himself, he divides readers into "the far and the near-sighted." See also 1952 "Diary" and "1952 yearbook, March 11," YCAL, Box 3.

"any fly by night plane": ST to HS, "Monday," internal evidence suggests May 19, 1952, on stationery of Hyde Park Hotel, AAA.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: THE DRAFTSMAN-LAUREATE OF MODERNISM.

"Your princ.i.p.al fear, I think": HS to ST, n.d. but internal evidence suggests 1954, YCAL, microfilm reels 14445.

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 t.i.tle 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 princ.i.p.al cities in Sardinia (her father's birthplace), and the P is for Pica.s.so, who is depicted standing with one foot on and holding a sword that pa.s.ses through the Louvre, which is small and on its side and which has blood pouring from a wound. Email 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, a.s.sociate editor, TNY, asking readers for a.s.sistance 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 pa.s.sagem 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 (JulyDecember 2008): 126. Bueno, on pp. 12930, 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 Belem appeared in Saul Steinberg (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art), text by Harold Rosenberg; and a drawing of Recife appeared in The Pa.s.sport, 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. (So Paulo: Inst.i.tuto Moreira Salles), 2011.

"invented a new world": Bueno, Saul Steinberg e o Brasil, pp. 12728.

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

"His bottle-end gla.s.ses": Ibid., p. 17; Pietro Bardi, Outros textos, collected papers in MASP; both quoted in Bueno, "Saul Steinberg e o Brasil," pp. 12829.

When they went to stay in the House of Gla.s.s: 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, Belem, 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 195152." 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 a.n.u.szkiewicz, Warner Leroy, and Gordon Bunshaft. From "List of t.i.tles, 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 Derriere le Miroir, no. 5354, MarchApril 1953 (Paris: Editions Pierre a 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 highb.a.l.l.s": 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 n.o.bility he met in France, Italy, and other countries, all of which he pasted into a sc.r.a.pbook now in YCAL. According to HS, interviews, September 9, 2007, and October 24, 2007, he collected them because "he was a sn.o.b and wanted everyone to know that he was there, he met them, these little d.u.c.h.essas 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 pa.s.sion 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 Helion 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 Helion'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 11February 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 Pa.s.sport.

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. Doc.u.mentation 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.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: BALKAN FATALISM.

"I've had and still have problems": ST to AB, April 28, 1954, SSF.

Just for fun, they were among: Certificate from New York Airways, n.d., YCAL, Box 8, "Correspondence 1954."

"too much stuff in it": ST, datebook entries, MarchMay 1954, YCAL, Box 3.

He expressed his interest: From the catalogue of part of ST's personal library, SSF. The books are now in possession of Anton von Dalen.

After every trip, his postcard collection: The Long Island duck graced the New Yorker cover for the issue of May 11, 1987.

"Whoever wants to know": Jacques Barzun, G.o.d's Country and Mine: A Declaration of Love Spiced with a Few Harsh Words of Reality (Boston: Little, Brown,1954), p. 159. ST owned and read The Baseball Encyclopedia, 8th ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1990).

"It just confirmed my suspicions": Leo Steinberg, remarks made at ST's memorial service, "Remembering Saul, November 1, 1999," SSF.

The first thing he did: Information that follows is from HS, interviews, 2007.

The players were intrigued: Some of the drawings appear in The Pa.s.sport (1954), others in The Labyrinth (1960).

"an incredible individual spirit": Karen van Lengen, interview, November 4, 2007.

His pitcher stares down: Billy Wilder wanted to buy all "the baseball items," but ST would not sell them. BW to ST, October 6, 1955, YCAL, Box 7, "Correspondence 195455."

"an allegorical play": ST, "Chronology," WMAA, p. 240.

This summer he needed to work: Lease for the house of J. Stanton Robbins, Wampha.s.suc Point, Stonington, Connecticut, from June 3 to July 22, 1954, YCAL, Box 8, "Correspondence, 1954."