Steinberg Spots, Or Cartoons?
Steinberg the cartoonist, Steinberg the artist… Steinberg the spot artist? The New Yorker sometimes refers to to its cartoonists as artists, and to its cartoons as drawings (but not exclusively). And so, yes, Steinberg is, according to The New Yorker, an artist and cartoonist. (The New York Times obit of Steinberg called him an “artist and cartoonist.”). I sometimes wonder why this what is he thing ever got started, and if it even matters. Does it really matter what he’s called; how his art is labelled? Perhaps a bit of confusion fits for Steinberg. Adding now to the muddle is this little bit of labelling I came across in recent weeks.
It was while looking through a recently acquired bound volume of New Yorkers (March-July 1954) that I realized I was seeing more Steinberg “spot” drawings than I’d ever remembered seeing before. Steinberg as New Yorker spot artist! A number of these spots were new to me, but at least one, in the issue of May 15 1954 — let’s call the drawing a fingerprint face — is one of the more famous Steinberg drawings. It appears quite small on the page — the size one ordinarily occupied by a spot drawing. Out of curiosity, I went to the database that accompanies The Complete New Yorker,* and looked up Steinberg’s work. I was surprised to find that the fingerprint drawing, although not your typical New Yorker cartoon (a drawing atop a caption) appears in the database as a cartoon. I would say too that the fingerprint drawing is not your typical captionless New Yorker cartoon/drawing (think of Charles Addams’s classic skiier who has somehow managed to go around a tree by going “through” it). Is using a fingerprint as a head of a figure a successful captionless drawing ala Addams’s skiier? In the eyes of whoever put together The New Yorker database, the answer is “yes.” It is IDed as cartoon just as Addams’s skiier is IDed as a cartoon. Case closed…except I was curious as to how many Steinberg spot-like drawings were also IDed as cartoons (the database does not list “spots” in their own category)
In an extremely casual and terribly incomplete survey using the bound New Yorker volume of May-July, 1954 as well as a later bound volume (issues January 7- February 18, 1956), I located a number of Steinberg drawings that, to my eye might “normally” be considered spots. All were listed as cartoons in the database, with one exception. In the 1956 bound volume I came across a Steinberg drawing on The Talk Of The Town page. This drawing, of a woman sitting in a chair tapping her left foot and left hand, is strangely not listed in the database. Can we possibly conclude then that this drawing is/was considered something else (perhaps not a spot?). It’s not an illustration. It’s most definitely a Steinberg drawing, but it’s not a cartoon. Is it? I wonder if the magazine should’ve started a separate section simply labelled “Drawings”…Steig’s later work would fit nicely into that category.
Here’s a trio of Steinberg drawings I found in the 1954 volume. Each is listed in the database as a cartoon. Sadly, in most cases I can’t show you the drawings (permissions, and all that):
June 5 1954, p.23…A passenger sleeps on an airplane. A circular window appears beside each figure. Three identical drawings, except in the first drawing, a crescent moon is shown in the window. For me, it works as a spot. I don’t see an idea there beyond the moon disappearing in the latter two windows as a man falls asleep in his chair.
June 19 1954, p. 22. A man carries a statue of himself. There is, I believe, no doubt that this is a cartoon. Yet, because of its size on the page, it teeters into spot drawing range, but not convincingly. Would’ve loved to see this run larger.
July 10 1954, p.25. Here’s one I can show you. It shows a person drawing an elaborate script as their own head. It appears on Joel Smith’s Steinberg At The New Yorker (shown above). Classic Steinberg however you define classic Steinberg. Is it a cartoon? It definitely has cartoon DNA.
All of these instances (and more that I’ve not IDed here) only confirm something I’ve always known: the magazine has not followed a overly strict set of self-imposed graphic rules and terminology (one of its strengths over these past 98 years). Within that looseness, Steinberg’s work, perhaps like no other artist in the magazine’s stable, knowingly or unknowingly criss-crossed the terminology, slipping into cartoon, or drawing, illustration, or spot as he pleased. How great was that.
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*This survey included use of the database supplied with The Complete New Yorker, a set published in 2005. If you want to use the database (included on 8 DVD-Roms, be aware that they do not work with modern computers. I bought an old used laptop specifically to run the discs).