Attempted Bloggery: The Passport

Showing posts with label The Passport. Show all posts

Saturday, June 29, 2024

Saul Steinberg, et al.: From the Library of Stephen Sondheim

Earlier this month, Doyle New York sold off some select items from the estate of Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim (1930-2021). For those of us who were never invited into Sondheim's living room, this was a rare chance to view, among other things, some of the songwriter's library.

A shelf full of some twenty-five art monographs included three essential books by Saul Steinberg (1914-1999): The Passport (1949), The Labyrinth (1960), and The Inspector (1973).

It's no surprise that the composer of "Sunday in the Park with George" (1984) should have several books about Georges Seurat on the shelf, but what about Georges de La Tour? Based on the number of books, Sondheim seems to have really appreciated his work. Christopher Finch's The Art of Walt Disney is the source of much of what I know on the subject. Sondheim also kept many of Dover's excellent Gustave Doré editions.

Looking further down to the next lot, there's The Best of H. T. Webster (on the bottom shelf in blue). On the fine arts side, there's a fair helping on Botero and Van Gogh, among many others.

I do love to sneak the occasional peak into people's libraries. I can't be the only one.

Stephen Sondheim books
Sale of June 18, 2024
It's great that the cataloguer chooses to single out different art subjects than I did.

https://attemptedbloggery.blogspot.com/2012/12/new-yorker-cartoons-at-auction.html

Stephen Sondheim books
Sale of June 18, 2024

https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/a-group-of-art-monographs-177-c-0a341edafc?objectID=189111387&algIndex=archive_lotNumber_asc_prod&queryID=2566416d8973bd6e5738f988024ea071

04675

Saturday, July 11, 2020

An Illegible Inscription in Saul Steinberg's The Passport

What do you make of this inscription by Saul Steinberg?

A Friend of the Blog sent along two photographs of a copy of Saul Steinberg's The Passport (1949). This copy was signed in 1954 with an indecipherable inscription. My first reaction was to think it must be in Romanian but, no, that is not the case, as this friend informed me. It is, rather, one of Steinberg's famous false documents, albeit executed on a very small scale as a book inscription. It strikes me that I have never seen Steinberg do such a thing in this context. After all these years of following his work, I continue to be astonished and confounded by him.

Note: My thanks to A Friend of the Blog for this fascinating submission.

Saul Steinberg's brilliant false documents are examined by the Saul Steinberg Foundation here.

Uniquely signed copies of The Passport and other books by Steinberg would always make welcome submissions to this blog. Examples of Steinberg's false documents would of course be acceptable too.

What keywords should I use for this post? It's clearly a signed book. Can it be said to have an inscription if the words are all nonsense? Can it be said to contain an original drawing, or is it just wayward handwriting? At a genuine loss, I included all three keywords.

Quick Links to the Attempted Bloggery Archives:

Saul Steinberg

Signed Books

Attempted Bloggery's Unreadable Index

03316

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Saul Steinberg: Happy New Year to Igor Stravinsky

Composer Igor Stravinsky must have been delighted to receive this 1953 New Year's gift from artist Saul Steinberg. Steinberg created a fair number of drawings on music paper, and, not at all surprisingly, many of them had musical themes. This one features a bandleader conducting cat and bird animal players. The bodies of Steinberg's birds are often his fingerprints. Fingerprints carry special significance for Steinberg and are key autobiographical as well as graphic elements in his book The Passport (1954).

Passantino Brand No. 92 identifies the type of music paper. I don't believe it is meant to be Steinberg's title.