Steinberg at the "New Yorker"

Steinberg´s high-concept graphic art—epitomized by his oft-imitated cartoon map in which a Manhattan distended with self-importance shoves the continents of North America and Asia to the margins—is enchantingly showcased in this lavishly illustrated retrospective of his work for the New Yorker . Smith, a curator at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar and author of Edward Steichen: The Early Years , surveys six decades of Steinberg´s pieces, including all 89 New Yorker covers (in full color), cartoons, wartime sketches from overseas, evocative (but never literal-minded) illustrations for articles, and unpublished items from the artist´s portfolio. The material is arranged thematically, examining such recurring motifs as cats, pedestals and rubber-stamped figures and documenting the turn to visual metaphor in Steinberg´s later work, where symbolic graphic representations of sound, abstract relationships and existential conundrums replace the usual scenario-with-verbal-punch line cartoon setup. Smith´s pithy biographical essay situates Steinberg as a self-conscious modernist who helped develop a distinctive New Yorker visual style, one with "a wry, informal wit... attuned to the jittery optimism of the Atomic Age." Steinberg´s cartoons usually made readers think before they laughed, and so will this splendid memorial to a 20th-century artistic landmark.