Whenever I encounter one of Saul Steinberg's ink drawings by his very human patchwork cat character, especially one in which he draws swooping spirals that soar upwards, releasing all kinds of whimsical figures, I'm reminded of a Chinese poem that begins, "I think, therefore I am a butterfly."

The imaginary worlds that unfold on even the smallest of Steinberg's notebook pages have offered laughter, inspiration, and wisdom to readers of the New Yorker, which published more than 1,000 of his drawings and paintings prior to his death in 1999. For those who have had the chance to view his paintings, assemblages and mixed media pieces in gallery and museum exhibitions, the experience was even more rewarding.

Last week, three shows on Steinberg's work opened in New York. Visitors who make it to all three will be treated to the breadth of this artist/illustrator's imagination, and the scope of his artistic practice. In conjunction with what amounts to a one-man art fair, I invited illustrators to pen a few lines about the master's influence on their thoughts and their practice. Here are the stories that came in, in alphabetical order.

If visual thinking exists, Steinberg perfected it, as he
exploited all the clichés of his time, in a very minimalist but
analytical manner, using almost anything handy
to deconstruct and recreate context,
such as: dress, old furniture, postcards, ink,
wooden rulers, color pencils, paper bags, lipstick,
even Dutch painting, if needed for flavor.
Steinberg was a problem seeker and a problem solver all in one!
He was a philosopher and a stand up comedian,
constantly mocking the conventional.
He was a discoverer: a mapmaker
who came from far away
and drew his coordinates daily,
so as not to get lost!
Istvan Banyai
Lakeville, CT, November 21, 2006

Remarks on Steinberg:
The crazy-quilt of Roadside America was observed by Steinberg on his first trip to America. It was from a lofty seat on a Greyhound bus bound from Miami to New York City that he gained his first impressions of America. This was a roadscape famously celebrated by another transplanted European, the novelist Vladimir Nabakov, who evoked a land as adolescent and infinitely alluring as his eponymous creature, that bud-breasted nymphet, Lolita. What Nabakov expressed verbally, Steinberg expressed visually - and both, with such rapture!
R. O. Blechman
New York, November 20, 2006

Saul Steinberg's work has influenced me since I was young. His childlike simplicity made it very approachable and his characters can't get any closer to the real thing. He makes mistakes in his work, he patches them, scribbles over them. I guess it's the freedom of thought directly on paper that is so attractive; they are actually not mistakes at all. His work is beautiful, along with his perspective on the world and human nature!
Mary Lynn Blasutta
Miami Beach, FL, November 28, 2006

Steinberg's raw/honest sketchbook-as-thought sensibilty is only now working its way into "illustration." It was ahead of its time . . . and, still, ours.
Steve Brodner
New York City, December 2, 2006

I always thought that Saul Steinberg was a menace to me...and deliberately wanted to do me in.
I first encountered him as a teenager when I bought All in Line, realizing that he was no ordinary cartoonist. It came from a 42nd Street bookstore where every book was 19 cents. Subsequent books informed me that he was a wizard... an inventive artist with incredible graphic sense.
Seeing his work made me fearful that I would disappear. There was no reason for me to go on living since everything I would hope to do had already been done by this man. My salvation was in avoiding his books and shows. If I didn't, my graphic identity would be lost. Steinberg's stamp is in two of my posters that I continue to show, because they are among my best.
Many years ago I did sneak [a look at] enough of his work to notice a style of decoration expressing mock elegance. I had never seen that style before and so I gave it a name: Roxy. A decade later that style was celebrated by designers and thereafter became known by its real name: Art Deco.
These days self control allows me to look, gingerly, at Steinberg's work and enjoy one of the great artists of the twentieth century.
Seymour Chwast
New York, November 27, 2006

My favorite Steinberg drawing is the map of New York he did for the New Yorker, where everything beyond the Hudson River becomes insignificant. It's brilliant and I really think it says a lot about the way he though and conceptualized. The first time I saw the original drawing, at the Society of Illustrators in New York, it was like seeing in person a movie star you had seen a hundred times before in movies. It's just amazing.
Nathaniel Gold
Long Beach, NY, November 20, 2006

I like to think of Steinberg as the artist who made the line respectable. He epitomized the abstract made concrete, the pure idea made visible. He was a virtuoso, but his virtuosity was of a limited sort. This gave him the status of a gifted amateur. There was no hint of professionalism in his work. He never seemed to break a sweat, never seemed to be doing any heavy lifting. Each idea, no matter how weighty, was rendered with the lightest touch. His work was the embodiment of wit. And, it seemed, he never drew unless it gave him pleasure. There was nothing of the work-a-day about his drawings.
This impression was reinforced by Steinberg's long association with the New Yorker (a veritable bastion of the talented amateur), the covers and interiors of which he graced with his drawings whenever, it seemed, the spirit moved him, or a whim overtook him. One could be forgiven for thinking he never made an illustration in his life [when one considers] the published albums filled with off-handedly inked doodles (there's no fat in these books, not a wasted or gratuitous line, not a drawing that doesn't communicate elegantly the inner workings of the artist's mind), and the absence of his work in other magazines during the last 50 years. While we mere illustrators were out consorting with whichever publications were willing to publish us, Steinberg was true to the New Yorker, and, it seemed, they to him.
It's only by looking through a book like Saul Steinberg: Illuminations, the catalog of the Morgan Library & Museum show, that another Steinberg begins to take shape. This is the practical, pragmatic pro, who made illustrations for television commercials and magazine ads, who illustrated other peoples' books, who made murals for restaurants and ocean liners, who designed Hallmark cards and wallpaper. In short, he was engaged in all the messy, wage-earning commissions that the illustrator depends on for his/her livelihood.
None of which diminishes Steinberg's stature as an artist. On the contrary, it only serves to give a human dimension to the otherworldly output of this graphic dynamo.
Steven Guarnaccia
Hamburg, December 4, 2006

When I discovered Steinberg's work it had a seismic impact that shook my vision of the world.
He threw an artistic stone that shattered preconceptions and left no cloud unturned.
Thanks to him, I learned that Broadway is only blocks from Japan and oil in a puddle can be a rainbow of possibilities.
Peter Kuper
Oaxaca, Mexico, December 2, 2006

Steinberg's celebratory New Yorker cover for Independence Day, 1964 regales the reader with icons of Americana. Reading from left to right are: the Eye of Providence, the Great Pyramid, and the Great Seal of the United States. The Eye passes a favorable glance over Pax Americana. National expansion, our manifest destiny, is rewarded with a rainbow adjacent to a ladder to the moon, the heavens, and beyond. Beneath the Great Seal, the scruffy waves of a mid-western plain provide a backdrop for a sphinx-like cat reigning magisterially upon a pedestal. Labeled vox populi, it spews a rational formula for the American Dream. Uncle Sam and the classical virtues of Greek democracy form the attending retinue. America is the collage Steinberg surveys, and here, he has created a unique "Ameri-scape."
Ginidir Marshall, MFA illustration candidate, FIT
New York, November 28, 2006

Steinberg taught me that the idea is always first, and the drawing second. The level of detail, the use of color, whether it's a pen or pencil drawing or a collage of found objects, all were in service of the idea. And somehow the results were what seemed to be an effortless beauty, and always distinctively Saul Steinberg.
Gregory Nemec
Pleasantville, New York, November 20, 2006

Irony, intelligence, keen observation and wit made warm and emphatically human by the magic dance of mark-making from a magic hand. Never mocking, always life affirming - and irresistibly charming. What a wonderful legacy! Saul Steinberg sent his messages to everyone. Not cartoon, not depiction, not genre bound...beautiful gifts from a wise friend.
Barron Storey
San Francisco, CA, November 28, 2006

I grew up on Saul Steinberg and still open his books regularly. I find his work comforting, brilliant and inspirational, like a wise old friend. His advice is always good: do what you want, how you want. No one is right or wrong in art.
Wendy Wahman
Bellevue, WA, November 20, 2006

I think, therefore I am a butterfly,
Ten millennia from now, a tiny flower's gentle call -
Through clouds of no dreams and no awakenings -
Shall flutter my colorful wings.
Dai Wangshu (1905-1950)

Illustrations:
Above: Domestic Animals, 1983, The New Yorker, March 12, 1983, at Museum of the City of New York.
Below: Untitled (Pineapple), ca. 1970, at Morgan Library & Museum.
Both drawings, © The Saul Steinberg Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Read Grace Glueck's review in The New York Times