Saul Steinberg: Speech Table

The title gives it away. Those odd pointy paired shapes on Saul Steinberg's 1972 Speech Table are not protractors or compasses but abstract, mechanized renditions of speech balloons. The table surface that Steinberg constructed with these images represents a drafting table complete with pencils and rulers. The artist's drafting tools are frequently represented in his creation. In 2016 this construction sold for $23,750, more than double the low estimate.

Speech Table, 1972
Saul Steinberg

Saul Steinberg
First Open / Post-War and Contemporary Art
Sale 12123, Lot 156
Christie's New York 28 September 2016

https://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?intObjectId=6023605

Note:  For further reading, see "The Art of Speech Balloons" on David Apatoff's Illustration Art blog. Word.


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Saul Steinberg: Speech

Saul Steinberg salutes the speech balloon as only he can. The original 1966 art for Speech was offered for sale last August at the Mary Ran Gallery in Cincinnati for $4500. It was sold earlier this year. Steinberg may have ostensibly drawn a speech balloon but its content relates to his indecipherable document drawings and its outline invokes his maps. So the "speech" Steinberg has enshrined on a pedestal is graphically far more fanciful than any commonplace comic book speech balloon with which we are already familiar.

Speech, 1966
Saul Steinberg

Saul Steinberg
Mary Ran Gallery
Invaluable Listing Retrieved February 8, 2019

https://www.invaluable.com/buy-now/saul-steinberg-speech-original-drawing-e7d444b878

Note:  For further reading, see "The Art of Speech Balloons" on David Apatoff's Illustration Art blog. Word.


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