Untitled [Mask]

Description

The art critic Harold Rosenberg wrote that Steinberg had introduced a new subject matter into postwar art: “the mystery of individual identity.” Between 1959 and 1963, the artist collaborated with the photographer Inge Morath, having friends and acquaintances wear paper bags on which he had drawn fantastic faces and then posing them for photographs. The resulting images present an array of attitudes, postures, and mannerisms, but the mask drawings themselves are ripe with innuendo.

Untitled [Mask]

Saul Steinberg

1961-62

Accession Number

220514

Medium

Black and purple crayons, over graphite with erasing, and white gouache, on cut brown paper bag

Dimensions

Max: 36.6 × 19.4 cm (14 7/16 × 7 11/16 in.)

Classification

drawings (visual works)

Museum

The Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, United States

Credit Line

Gift of The Saul Steinberg Foundation