Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art

About this Work

The encapsulation of a visual paradox can be found in Steinberg’s rendering of a man who has seemingly drawn himself into existence and then draws the angular abstraction that will ultimately box him in. Around the time of this work’s creation, Steinberg shared in a letter to his friend Aldo Buzzi that he was “rediscovering cubism”—a rediscovery found in the abstracted and geometric forms of this drawing, such as the flatness of the figure’s features and the doubled use of the man’s leg as a desk leg. Steinberg described such drawings as “jokes about art history and the conventions of drawing.” The artist at work, drawing at his table, was a favorite Steinberg theme. Around 1963, a particular type emerged, where the things drawn—abstractions, graphic styles, the artist, or table—are produced directly from the artist’s pen.