Sag Harbor

Saul Steinberg, Sag Harbor, 1969, watercolor and rubber stamp and ink on paper, sheet: 30 x 40 in. (76.2 x 101.6 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation, 1986.6.99

Artwork Details

Title: Sag Harbor
Artist: Saul Steinberg
Date: 1969
Location: Not on view
Dimensions: sheet: 30 x 40 in. (76.2 x 101.6 cm)
Credit Line: Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation
Mediums: ink
watercolor
Mediums Description: watercolor and rubber stamp and ink on paper
Classifications: Drawing
Subjects: Landscape — New York — Sag Harbor
Object Number: 1986.6.99
Linked Open Data: https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/1986.6.99

Artwork Description

Although Saul Steinberg is best known as the New Yorker cartoonist whose fanciful people and animals captured the masquerades of modern life, he was also concerned with the impact of development of the land. Sag Harbor, named for a town on Long Island, offers two conflicting views. Five small images (Steinberg called them “Postcards”) of an empty plain contrast with a larger view of a built environment that bears no traces of nature. Between them is a handwritten script that presumably clarifies the message. But the ever-witty Steinberg confounds the explanation. The script as well as the “signature” and official-looking stamp are indecipherable.

Modern American Realism: The Sara Roby Foundation Collection, 2014