A work made of pen and brush and black ink, with black and green crayon, over black pencil, with cut-and-pasted brown and white paper collaged elements, on brown paper bag.

Untitled (Mask)

1961

Saul Steinberg American, born Romania, 1914-1999

United States

The art critic Harold Rosenberg wrote that Steinberg had introduced a new subject matter into postwar art: “the mystery of individual identity.” Between 1959 and 1963, the artist collaborated with the photographer Inge Morath, having friends and acquaintances wear paper bags on which he had drawn fantastic faces and then posing them for photographs. The resulting images present an array of attitudes, postures, and mannerisms, but the mask drawings themselves are ripe with innuendo.

Pen and brush and black ink, with black and green crayon, over black pencil, with cut-and-pasted brown and white paper collaged elements, on brown paper bag

Prints and Drawings