Doodles from an old sketchbook of mine. Saul Steinberg is in my top 5 favorite artists of all time.

When he’s not busy being an old grump, Apatoff can really bust out a nice post:

The great Saul Steinberg never learned to paint clouds. If you look at the clouds decorating the backgrounds of his pictures over his long career, you’ll see that he never settled on an approach. Instead, Steinberg worked in a state of perpetual inquiry. He was a first class intellect taking pleasure in the experiment.

He describes my ideal of drawing:

Steinberg seemed to refine his technique just far enough to diagram his concept and no further.

That’s all I need: drawing good enough to diagram my concept. Then it’s time to move on.

Filed under: Saul Steinberg.

Saul Steinberg, “Untitled,” 1970

Saul Steinberg, New Yorker, Mar. 7th, 1970

(via paulconstant)

Saul Steinberg

Saul Steinberg + baseball!

…drawing derives from drawing. My line wants to remind constantly that it’s made of ink. I appeal to the complicity of my reader who will transform this line into meaning by using our common background of culture, history, poetry….The reader, by following my line with his eyes, becomes a draftsman.

AND:

The whole history of art influenced me: Egyptian paintings, latrine drawings, primitive and insane art, Seurat, children’s drawings, embroidery, Paul Klee. But I also liked all sorts of disreputable things like cartoons and advertising art. A big influence on me has been the study and the discipline of architecture—the combination of precision, draftsmanship and reason. Architecture is the most noble, difficult and philosophical branch of the arts.

Holy crap, is this a treasure. For more Steinberg on Steinberg, see REFLECTIONS AND SHADOWS.

David Mazzuchelli (top) vs. Saul Steinberg (bottom)

Just realized that Matt Madden already pointed this out on his post about Mazzuchelli’s MoCCA show.

The new David Mazzuchelli book is like if Steinberg had decided to blow this drawing up into a book. Each person in the book is drawn in a style that’s a metaphor for their character. Awesome.

(image via derik badman)