The fifth and final volume in the Essays by Leo Steinberg series, focusing on modern artists.   Leo Steinberg was one of the most original art historians of the twentieth century, known for taking interpretive risks that challenged the profession by overturning reigning orthodoxies. In essays and lectures ranging from old masters to modern art, he combined scholarly erudition with eloquent prose that illuminated his subject and a credo that privileged the visual evidence of the image over the literature written about it. His writings, sometimes provocative and controversial, remain vital and influential reading. Steinberg’s perceptions evolved from long, hard looking at his objects of study. Almost everything he wrote included passages of formal analysis that were always put into the service of interpretation.   Following the series publication on Pablo Picasso, this volume focuses on other modern artists, including Cézanne, Monet, Matisse, Max Ernst, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Hans Haacke, and Jeff Koons. Included are seven unpublished lectures and essays, Steinberg’s landmark essay “Encounters with Rauschenberg,� a survey of twentieth-century sculpture, and an examination of the role of authorial predilections in critical writing. The final chapter presents a collection of Steinberg’s humorous pieces, witty forays penned for his own amusement.    Modern Art is the fifth and final volume in a series that presents Steinberg’s writings, selected and edited by his longtime associate Sheila Schwartz.  

Leo Steinberg was one of the most original art historians of the twentieth century, known for taking interpretive risks that challenged the profession by overturning reigning orthodoxies. In essays and lectures that ranged from old masters to contemporary art, he combined scholarly erudition with an eloquent prose that illuminated his subject and a credo that privileged the visual evidence of the image over the literature written about it. His writings, sometimes provocative and controversial, remain vital reading. For half a century, Steinberg delved into Michelangelo's work, revealing the symbolic structures underlying the artist's highly charged idiom. This volume of essays and unpublished lectures elucidates many of Michelangelo's paintings, from frescoes in the Sistine Chapel to the Conversion of St. Paul and the Crucifixion of St. Peter, the artist's lesser-known works in the Vatican's Pauline Chapel; also included is a study of the relationship of the Doni Madonna to Leonardo. Steinberg's perceptions evolved from long, hard looking. Almost everything he wrote included passages of old-fashioned formal analysis, but always put into the service of interpretation. He understood that Michelangelo's rendering of figures, as well as their gestures and interrelations, conveys an emblematic significance masquerading under the guise of naturalism. Michelangelo pushed Renaissance naturalism into the furthest reaches of metaphor, using the language of the body to express fundamental Christian tenets once expressible only by poets and preachers. Michelangelo's Paintings is the second volume in a series that presents Steinberg's writings, selected and edited by his longtime associate Sheila Schwartz.

The fourth volume in the Essays by Leo Steinberg series, focusing on the artist Pablo Picasso. Leo Steinberg was one of the most original art historians of the twentieth century, known for taking interpretive risks that challenged the profession by overturning reigning orthodoxies. In essays and lectures ranging from old masters to modern art, he combined scholarly erudition with eloquent prose that illuminated his subject and a credo that privileged the visual evidence of the image over the literature written about it. His writings, sometimes provocative and controversial, remain vital and influential reading. Steinberg's perceptions evolved from long, hard looking at his objects of study. Almost everything he wrote included passages of formal analysis but always put into the service of interpretation. This volume brings together Steinberg's essays on Pablo Picasso, many of which have been studied and debated for decades, such as "The Philosophical Brothel," as well as unpublished lectures, including "The Intelligence of Picasso," a wide-ranging look at Picasso's enduring ambition to stretch the agenda of representation, from childhood drawings to his last self-portrait. An introduction by art historian Richard Shiff contextualizes these works and illuminates Steinberg's lifelong dedication to refining the expository, interpretive, and rhetorical features of his writing. Picasso is the fourth volume in a series that presents Steinberg's writings, selected and edited by his longtime associate Sheila Schwartz.

Leo Steinberg was one of the most original and daring art historians of the twentieth century, known for taking interpretative risks that challenged the profession by overturning reigning orthodoxies. In essays and lectures that ranged from old masters to contemporary art, he combined scholarly erudition with an eloquent prose that illuminated his subject and a credo that privileged the visual evidence of the image over the literature written about it. His works, sometimes provocative and controversial, remain vital and influential reading. For half a century, Steinberg delved into Michelangelo's work, revealing the symbolic structures underlying the artist's highly charged idiom. This volume of essays and unpublished lectures explicates many of Michelangelo's most celebrated sculptures, applying principles gleaned from long, hard looking. Almost everything Steinberg wrote included passages of old-fashioned formal analysis, but here put to the service of interpretation. He understood that Michelangelo's rendering of figures as well as their gestures and interrelations conveys an emblematic significance masquerading under the guise of naturalism. Michelangelo pushed Renaissance naturalism into the furthest reaches of metaphor, using the language of the body and its actions to express fundamental Christian tenets once expressible only by poets and preachers--or, as Steinberg put it, in Michelangelo's art, "anatomy becomes theology." Michelangelo's Sculpture is the first in a series of volumes of Steinberg's selected writings and unpublished lectures, edited by his longtime associate Sheila Schwartz. The volume also includes a book review debunking psychoanalytic interpretation of the master's work, a lighthearted look at Michelangelo and the medical profession and, finally, the shortest piece Steinberg ever published.

A fresh look at the multiplicity of meanings in Leonardo's Last Supper. A picture universally recognized, endlessly scrutinized and described, incessantly copied, adapted, lampooned: does Leonardo's near-ruined Last Supper still offer anything new to be seen or to be said? This book is a resounding Yes to both questions. With direct perception--and with attention paid to the work of earlier scholars and to the criticism embodied in the production of copyists over the past five hundred years-Leo Steinberg demonstrates that Leonardo's mural has been consistently oversimplified. This most thought-out picture in Western art, painted in the 1490s on the north wall of the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan, is a marvel of compressed meanings. Its subject is not one arrested moment, but successiveness and duration. It is not only Christ's announcement of the forthcoming betrayal, but in equal measure the institution of the Eucharist. More than the spur of the moment animates the disciples, and more than perspective determines their housing. Though Leonardo's geometry obeys all rules, it responds as well to Christ's action at center, as if in emanation from the prime mover. The picture is simultaneously narrative and sacramental. As its protagonist is two-natured, as the twofold event of this night is both human submission and divine dispensation--so the entire picture is shown to have been conceived in duplexity: a sublime pun. Meanwhile, the unending disagreement as to what exactly is represented, what the depicted actions express, how and where this assembly is seated--all these still-raging disputes are traced to a single mistaken assumption: that Leonardo intended throughout to be unambiguous and clear, and that any one meaning necessarily rules out every other. As Steinberg reveals an abundance of significant interrelations previously overlooked, Leonardo's masterpiece regains the freshness of its initial conception and the power to fascinate.

Originally published in 1983, Leo Steinberg's classic work has changed the viewing habits of a generation. After centuries of repression and censorship, the sexual component in thousands of revered icons of Christ is restored to visibility. Steinberg's evidence resides in the imagery of the overtly sexed Christ, in Infancy and again after death. Steinberg argues that the artists regarded the deliberate exposure of Christ's genitalia as an affirmation of kinship with the human condition. Christ's lifelong virginity, understood as potency under check, and the first offer of blood in the circumcision, both required acknowledgment of the genital organ. More than exercises in realism, these unabashed images underscore the crucial theological import of the Incarnation.
This revised and greatly expanded edition not only adduces new visual evidence, but deepens the theological argument and engages the controversy aroused by the book's first publication.

The Author Reports On The Jewish Communities Of Poland During And Immediately After The Holocaust.

The Author Reports On The Jewish Communities Of Poland During And Immediately After The Holocaust.

In his insightful and engrossing lecture, Leo Steinberg surveys and critiques the work of Robert Rauschenberg, one of the great American post-war artists. He also discusses his own experience as a critic in the exciting and turbulent art world of New York in the 1950s and 1960s. The result is a rare glimpse not only into Rauschenberg, but also into Steinberg.
With the sharpness and confidence that can only come from a critic who has long been involved with Rauschenberg's work, Steinberg offers an in-depth discussion of such major pieces as the "Erased DeKooning Drawing, Bed," and "Monogram," He explains the subtle differences between his interpretations and those of other critics, such as Clement Greenberg and Hilton Kramer. He candidly reflects on how he has changed his mind over the years, and defends his new ideas about Rauschenberg's work with precise, fresh arguments. He critically evaluates Rauschenberg's more recent work and addresses how it falls short from the artist's earlier work.
From Rauschenberg's silk-screen prints of the 1960s to the vegetable dye transfer prints of the 1990s, Steinberg warns against the dangers of overinterpretation and iconographic enthusiasm. He argues that the unifying strand through this great artist's work is his drive to appropriate, to take objects and images from the world and make them his own by making them become a part of his art.
Provocative, intelligent, and beautifully articulated, Steinberg's words shed light on one remarkable artist and on the post-war New York art scene, on Steinberg's particular appreciation of Rauschenberg and on his life's work as an art critic.