Existing comment:
Saul Steinberg, Self-Portrait, 1984,
The images depicted on the wall behind Steinberg were ones that inspired him. They include, at upper left, a reproduction of Piet Mondrian's Composition with Blue and Yellow, a painting in the collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; Vincent van Gogh's L'Arlésienne (lower left); and Jean-François Millet's The Sower (lower right). At upper right, a portrait of a military officer resembles ones by Japanese artist Hibata Ōsuke of American navy men in Commodore Perry's Japan expedition. Looking strangely foreign in a Japanese-style setting, the gaze of the bespectacled officer seems aimed at Steinberg.
Curiously, Steinberg did not depict himself with the mustache he had the year this drawing was made. He also seems never to have smoked a pipe. |