Saul Steinberg, The Line, The Saul Steinberg Foundation and Nieves, New York City, 1954/2011

    

In 1954, Saul Steinberg, the celebrated Romanian born cartoonist and artist, was invited by Ernesto Rogers, a partner in the Milan based architectural firm BBPR, to design a series of sgraffito murals for the “Children’s Labyrinth” at the 10th Triennial of Milan.(1) The labyrinth was designed with walls that formed a trefoil ‘clover leaf’ design and Steinberg created four long drawings that were photographically enlarged and then incised into the walls using the sgraffito technique.(2) Each of Steinberg’s drawings drew upon themes close to his heart and were titled: The Line, Types of Architecture, Shores of the Mediterranean, and Cities of Italy.

The Line was first published as an accordion in 2011 by the Swiss publishing house Nieves, and in 2014 they published all four of Steinberg’s drawings as accordions and presented in a slipcase.(3) The central formal feature of this nearly 19 foot accordion is a thin black line that runs just above the midpoint along the whole length of the work. Above and below this line Steinberg has drawn in his inimitable style, scenes of travel, exotic locations, train stations, women’s fashions, palaces, old buildings, grand courtyards and one cat amongst other subjects. There’s a real feeling of improvisation and spontaneity to Steinberg’s ‘laundry line’ of drawings with all of them imbued with an underlying sense of mischievousness that would appeal to the imaginations of young children. 

In some ways this work is a realization of a discussion Steinberg had had with a fellow architectural student, Aldo Buzzi, from 1933 in which “…they found themselves deep into a philosophical discussion of what would happen if an artist drew a single line and allowed it to evolve into a drawing.”(4)

Looking at the larger aspects of this accordion three themes emerge. Firstly, there are its origins as a working prototype for a temporary site-specific work. It would, however, take fifty-seven years before it became available to a much wider audience as an accordion. Alas, Steinberg, never got to see this work as it came out twelve years after his death.(5)

Secondly, this accordion also serves a documentary function in preserving this ephemeral work’s original design and imagery for the future. Thirdly, this accordion is also a children’s book, since its imagery was specifically designed to be installed inside in a child friendly environment. Additionally, the drawings all promise a journey of adventure accompanied by all sorts of twists and turns to keep younger audiences following the line.

Footnotes:

1. The Milan triennial was originally established in 1923 and serves as a showcase for Italian architecture and design, and currently takes place in The Triennale di Milano, a museum of art and design in Milan.

2. Sgraffito is a technique where potters can put a layer of glaze or slip on a piece of pottery, let it dry, then use a pottery carving tool to scratch at it to show the base layer of color.  Sgraffito derives from an Italian word meaning “to scratch.” diamondcoretools.com. Accessed: 4.2.24

3. The original drawings were created on long sheets of paper and then rolled up and mailed from New York to Milan, see: Deirdre Bair, Saul Steinberg: A Biography, Doubleday, New York, 2012, pgs. 325-326.

4. Bair, Deirdre, Saul Steinberg: A Biography, Doubleday, New York, 2012, p. 37.

5. The Line, Nieves, Zurich, 2011, consists of 30 single sided pages, individually

10” x 7.5” and when unfolded 18ft 9”.

front page 

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