Where the Juice Comes From
Thursday, August 5, 2010 at 6:57AM
Saul Steinberg, who is mostly know for his New Yorker cartoons and covers transcended the art of cartoons, painting and sculpture. He is still today my greatest influence in ingenuity and artistry. In every label and every vintage there is always a little Steinberg. I had the opportunity to meet the recluse who would wear a cartooned brown grocery bag before a camera.
In 1989, I saw a little man across the room at a New York diner, who looked like he could be a Saul Steinberg get up from his lunch and waited for the light on the corner of 75th and 3rd. I knew he lived in the exact same apartment I lived in my childhood at 103 east 75th street, between Lexington and 3rd Avenue. Watching him headed in that direction across the street, I quickly paid my check and followed him up the block towards the 103 awning. Here it was the moment to meet my mentor. As I slowly started to pass him I asked if he was Saul Steinberg. He looked at me and said “no.” I froze and paused as he slipped into the apartment building I had once lived in. Bill the doorman who has known me since arriving in NY at 8 years old, nodded his head said, “Yes.” It was him .
