by Deirdre Bair
The only time Steinberg had ever been able to communicate with Hedda was through letters when they were apart, and now he was repeating the pattern with Gigi. When he wanted to be alone to work, he withdrew into bleak silences that shut her out completely. She searched for explanations for his behavior even though she could not accept them, accusing him of being “so wrapped up in his ‘art’ and the business of it, the administration, etc. that there is no room for life or pleasure.” And because she was “not devoted to art,” the more time they were together and his silences increased, she felt “more and more bored and distant.”
AS ALWAYS, TRAVEL PRESENTED A WAY for Steinberg to avoid problems, and he planned to take advantage of it by accepting a commission to execute a mural in a private home in the center of Milan, the Palazzina Mayer on the Via Bigli. While he was making preparations for the November 1961 trip, news came from Lica that their mother had died, on October 3. Rosa had been hospitalized since August 22 with a combination of ailments that included severe anemia, diabetes, and microbial flora in the lungs, most likely caused by cancer. In September she suffered a minor stroke, which left her bedridden and unable to speak, and shortly after, when she became unable to move or swallow, she needed gastric intubation. Her doctors said that the usual ravages of old age had been intensified by severe “delusional mental stress,” as she continued to worry about money and mourn her dead husband whenever she was semiconscious. Rosa was mostly unconscious in her last days, but when Lica tried to show her a letter from Saul, she brightened long enough to call out a garbled version of his childhood nickname, Sauly.
Knowing that Saul had work in Italy and Rosa had to be buried before he could get to Paris, Lica asked him not to change his travel plans. She told him not to be unduly upset that he had not been there when their mother died, because he had been “her miracle maker with boundless powers” and done so much for her throughout her lifetime. To make him feel better, Lica related the story of how she whispered to Rosa that the distinguished neurologist who was examining her was a “famous professor.” Rosa nodded and said, “Saul told him to care for me,” convinced that the doctor had come at her famous son’s bidding. Lica begged him to be comforted that he was his mother’s “myth until the end.”
It was a difficult time for both Saul and Lica as they dealt with their mother’s death and at the same time the death of their dear Aunt Pesa in Israel. Of the elder generation, only their aunt Sali Marcovici, Rosa’s last surviving sister, was left, and Saul, who had been sending her and her family money for years, increased his generosity toward them. Saul and Lica were drawn together in their sorrow and found a common bond in their mutual love of art. Through their work, they recaptured the closeness that had seemed forever lost when language and distance separated them for so many years. As adults without parents, they turned to each other for solace and became close and loving friends from that time onward.
Lica asked him to write to her in French, as she had all but forgotten Romanian, especially the vocabulary to describe aspects of her work. When he sent birthday greetings in April 1962, she told him she was undergoing a period of “great changes and renewal” in her art and implored him to try to do the same: “If you feel like your work has become routine or it bores you, try to change your technique. It’s amazing what you can discover through lithography and engraving. I’m truly my father’s daughter with the press … I stay in the studio for days on end.” She had created a studio within the house and urged him to bring Gigi for a holiday so they all could work together.
AFTER HE FINISHED THE VIA BIGLI MURAL, he returned to New York to find a welcome check from The New Yorker for $500 and the bad news that he needed a new roof on the house in Springs, which would cost $650. Good news soon followed when Sports Illustrated asked him to go to the Rose Bowl to create a portfolio of drawings. He started to make lists in preparation, starting with things to buy for Gigi (“bed, stockings, underwear”). He followed the notation to “work” with an arrow pointing to “make money.” There were also two notations to “write Gigi letter” (even though they were living together in the apartment) and “be nice to Gigi.”
While Saul was away, Gigi’s letters told him that she was feeling “low” and had resorted to a combination of brandy and sleeping pills to keep from being “depressed.” He was worried when she told him that she could not eat and was losing weight, but he was terrified when she described her great pleasure at driving her “new friend, the Jaguar,” especially after she told him that she left it parked on the street because she never got around to putting it in the garage. He knew about her mother’s crippling depressions and was torn between consoling her and scolding her for carelessness with his beloved car. He thought to solve both problems by buying her a car of her own, a four-door Chevrolet sedan, and by sending her to the first of the long series of psychoanalysts she would consult in years to come. And yet no matter how much he cared for her, he still had difficulty curbing his temper when she described falling into one of her self-absorbed depressions; he was only slightly relieved when she wrote in her imperfect English that it was actually “amazing” that she managed to be as well as she was: “No crying or spook. Feel cheerful etc. You have no idea how good you have done to me. I finally feel like a mensch.”
Gigi kept a sort of diary too, and while she was writing letters of gratitude for everything he gave her, she was also confiding to herself that she had “met a younger man.” She was not one to stay at home while Steinberg was away, and she frequented a succession of bars, where she liked to drink and pick up men. In later years Max’s Kansas City became a favorite, but at the beginning of her life with Steinberg, any nearby watering hole would do. She kept the incident of the “younger man” to herself when Steinberg returned and was thrilled to learn that they were going to Hollywood, where they would stay at the Beverly Hilton and spend New Year’s Eve with some of his fancy friends at a party given by Billy Wilder. She swam in the hotel pool, drove down Sunset Boulevard to the Pacific Ocean, and helped Steinberg drive the rented car across the desert to Las Vegas, where they both gambled.
Unfortunately, the trip was not all sunlight and roses: the Sports Illustrated accountants spent most of the following year refusing to pay the $106.47 for the rented car, which they had not approved in advance, and demanding that Steinberg return the $23 they had overpaid for unauthorized expenses.
IN NEW YORK, STEINBERG FOUND HIMSELF turning down more requests than he could possibly fill even if he had wanted to try. Lincoln Center wanted posters and programs for Claudio Arrau’s concerts, a British woman living in France wanted him to contribute to an “Artists and Writers Cook Book,” editors from Putnam, Knopf, and Harper all wanted books, and Cass Canfield was urging him to think seriously about a new collection that would remove the sour taste left by the non-selling Labyrinth. In Italy, Rizzoli wanted to publish a book that would lead off with the cartoons Steinberg had done for Bertoldo, Settebello, and other Italian publications before culminating with some of his current work, and the publisher Feltrinelli wrote to congratulate him on winning the 1962 Palma d’Oro per la letteratura illustrata. There were other foreign requests as well, particularly from Germany, where Rowohlt Verlag was pressing for a second book.
Despite the upheavals in his life, he still managed to produce two New Yorker covers in 1960 and three in 1961, and he was full of ideas for more to come. He had designed several book jackets and contributed cover drawings to periodicals such as Art in America and Opera News, and he was featured in a special all-Steinberg issue of the Journal of the American Institute of Planners, edited by his friend the artist Jesse Reichek. Steinberg had always been a popular subject for journalists and art historians, and depending on his mood, he answered their questions with thrusts and parries that sometimes veered close to the truth but never quite told it. Seldom did a questioner cause him to shut down completely, but the art historian and curator Katherine Kuh managed to do it.
Kuh had been a
booster and friend to both Steinberg and Sterne from her days as curator at the Art Institute of Chicago. Now she was living and working in New York and had become close to Sterne, frequently dropping in for the informal suppers and long conversations about art that were one of Sterne’s greatest pleasures in her post-Steinberg life. Kuh was collecting interviews with prominent American artists for the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art, and she was eager to include Steinberg. He sat with her for an afternoon, patiently responding to her questions, after which he went home and wrote a letter explaining his reasons for not completing the interview. He told Kuh that “the man involved in his own history becomes himself a work of art. And a work of art doesn’t permit changes and it doesn’t paint or write.” To complete the interview would be his equivalent of the “planting of artistic ruins for present and future archeologists,” and it could only result in “predictable originality … and other catch-the-fleeting-moment arts.” By cooperating fully, he would be creating “a complicity in which I would play my part according to popular expectations.” He offered this explanation for “the sake of courtesy” to her and also for himself, so that he would not be “poisoned by unfinished business.”
ALL THE WHILE THAT HE WAS fulfilling his many commissions and professional obligations, he was also busy introducing Gigi to his New York acquaintances, most of whom had grown used to seeing them together. He was grateful for invitations from women, among them the painters Elaine de Kooning, Buffie Johnson, Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, and Helen Frankenthaler. Steinberg took Gigi to large gatherings but left her at home when he attended small dinners where conversation was likely to be about ideas, literature, and art. He saw many friends alone, such as Bill Steig, with whom he was now exchanging recommendations for reading or having an occasional lunch after meetings at The New Yorker’s art department. He joined Ad Reinhardt, who communicated with friends via “bellicose postcards that were an affectionate reminder of his constantly hostile presence,” for a gallery opening on the day the world was supposed to end according to “740 Hindu priests in New Delhi.” Aldo Buzzi was passing through New York en route to Los Angeles to work on one of Lattuada’s films, and although he had not yet met Gigi, Steinberg saw him alone at the Plaza Hotel. He did not take her to the dinner party hosted by the British publisher Lord Weidenfeld for one of his important collectors, Mrs. Henry J. (Ruth) Heinz, and he went alone to a dinner given by Otto Preminger, who tried from time to time to engage him in projects that were most often unrealized.
He was out almost every night, and most of the time without Gigi. She became deeply unhappy with living her life “on a stand-by basis” and forced a confrontation in which she accused him of taking no pleasure in her company and causing her to look for what she euphemistically called “other things.” She accused him of not liking her and disapproving of anything she might say “that was not originated by you or your interests.” When they argued about it, he accused her of a “lack of devotion,” while she retorted that there was too much loneliness involved in trying to live with him and she needed to search for something else. He thought it was a good idea, and suggested two ways she might go about filling her days with worthwhile interests: she could find her own apartment, one in which she could express her individuality and creativity on her own time and in her own milieu; and she could take some courses to broaden her experiences and educate herself to fit better into his world. He told her she could start by attending a school that would rid her of her heavy German accent, and he arranged to pay for her lessons in spoken English.
She attended several sessions but decided she could do better on her own. She wanted a real education, so she enrolled in comparative literature at Columbia University’s School of General Studies and began a rigorous program that, had she completed it, would have given her a master’s degree. To prepare for the fall term, she found her own apartment at 109 Waverly Place and moved there in April 1962.
Sigrid Spaeth and Saul Steinberg stayed mostly together for the rest of her life, but they never lived under the same roof again except for vacations in Springs or when they traveled. This was their first of many partings and probably the gentlest of all, but it still was not easy.
CHAPTER 27
BOREDOM TELLS ME SOMETHING
I get slightly bored with my work, I don’t find the excitement, real excitement, now this boredom tells me something, it’s a message.
Once Gigi had moved into her own apartment, Steinberg believed that they were developing a genuine friendship such as he had never known with a woman before. He found that he liked living alone and especially liked being able to fit her into his life on his own terms and in his own time: when he wanted to be with her, she was available, and when he wanted to be alone, she went her own way. Sex remained a major bond between them, but she was introducing another level of communication into their relationship because of how eagerly she looked forward to studying at Columbia in the fall. She was preparing for courses in comparative literature by reading many of the books Steinberg recommended, among them Madame Bovary, which he cheerfully reread in order to discuss it with her. They also increased their moviegoing, especially to European films such as the latest Buñuel and Bergman pictures, so that between her reading and their mutual love of cinema, they were able to communicate intellectually in a far more relaxed manner than when they had been living together.
Shortly after Gigi moved to Waverly Place, her mother came from Trier on the first stop of an extended visit to her other daughter, Uschi, in Ohio. Things were so good between Gigi and Saul that when she asked to borrow the Jaguar to drive her mother to Columbus, he agreed. When she returned, he also agreed to pay for her to spend the summer traveling alone throughout Europe. Once again she went first-class, staying in grand hotels in London and Paris, taking the Train Bleu to the Riviera, and then renting a Citroën DS-19 for a leisurely drive from Menton to St. Tropez. Eventually she wound her way to Trier, where she kept her father company while her mother remained in Columbus. Steinberg was happy to see Gigi go, because the more she was happily occupied, the less likely she was to become depressed and create problems.
In June 1962 he went to Appleton, Wisconsin, to receive his first honorary degree, from Lawrence College. When it was first offered, he questioned the selection committee’s wisdom in choosing him and intended to decline until the college president assured him that he deserved the honor and would not regret accepting it. In all his travels across America, Wisconsin was one of the few states Steinberg had not been to, and he was curious to see the Dairy State and meet the people who lived there. Much fuss was made of him in Appleton, and when a reporter for the local newspaper interviewed him, he shied away from personal revelations with the excuse that he could not answer “conventional” questions because he himself was “so unconventional.” When the reporter asked if he was pleased with the honor, he responded evasively that he was “curious about the process.” He insisted that he had no idea why he had been chosen, but the degree citation provided the answer, saying that Steinberg never wasted time asking “what is reality?”; he simply presented the reality of “the crooked mirror where we find ourselves distorted into truth.”
STEINBERG TOLD ALDO BUZZI THAT RECEIVING the degree initially made him feel stupid, but in reality he was flattered by what he believed was an invitation from the intellectual community to join its company. Always a voracious reader, he found himself more at home in the company of writers, where the exchange of ideas and opinions was intensely verbal, swift, and sharp, than in the company of painters, where words were not as important as physical activity, which often led to aggressive or outlandish behavior as a substitute for conversation. Writers sat around the dinner table and exchanged verbal barbs that could be deeply wounding to the psyche, but painters were more likely to get falling-down drunk at the Cedar Tavern or at Max’s Kansas City and start throwing punches at each other. To Steinberg, the abstract expressionists who ruled the art world in New York were “artists
of gesture,” and “the stronger the gesture … the greater the fame.” He placed Jackson Pollock at the top of this list, saying that he painted “in cahoots with the law of gravity … He used it as a companion.” With the exception of the old friends who were painters (among them Mary Frank, Bill de Kooning, Sandy Calder, and Ad Reinhardt), Steinberg made few new ones among the up-and-coming generation in New York, because, with the exception of some “girls, all are timorous and conventional people, especially the so-called painters.” Among his old friends, Louisa Calder disapproved of his separation from Hedda, so he and Gigi were not invited to Connecticut as often as before, but he enjoyed the outings to Princeton, New Jersey, where Esteban Vicente lived and worked. Their closeness deepened when Gigi and Harriet Vicente developed their own close friendship.
A decade later, in the 1970s, when an interviewer asked how Steinberg had experienced the art scene of the fifties, he described the painters who were his friends then as “the survivors,” saying that he remained friendly with them “but we are separated now, divided by a variety of reasons, among them changes in the social class.” He used “social class” as a euphemism for money: in his mind, those artists who made a lot of it became different from those who did not. He insisted that it was not like this for European artists, for whom money was not the principal determinant of class and status, and although he did not overtly use himself as an example, he implied that he had succeeded in both worlds. Steinberg, who was born into the working class and now moved easily within the upper classes, not only because of his talent but also because of his ever-increasing wealth, thought of himself as “some sort of link between the Europeans and the Americans.” When asked to describe this link, he said it was primarily because he shared with French painters the general quality of being literary. There were three with whom he was extremely close, all of them as immersed in philosophy as they were in literature: Geer van Velde, Jean Hélion, and Joan Miró. Van Velde lived in Cachan, as did Lica and her family, so there was ample opportunity for conversations about his personal philosophy of art, which were stimulating for Steinberg and from which he felt he learned much. He met Hélion every time they were on the same continent, and they engaged in a lively correspondence about their work and the influences upon it. Steinberg had a more formal relationship with Miró, almost the homage of a younger artist toward an older and revered one, but there too the visits and correspondence were consistent and energizing for both.