Saul Steinberg, the extraordinary emigrant

There are two drawings that represent – and will represent for the socio-archaeologists of the future when the American empire has vanished – the perceived grandeur of Manhattan. The first is the image used on the cover of Rem Koolhaas’s retrospective manifesto: "Delirious New York", published in 1978. In the drawing by his wife, Madelon Vriesendorp, the skyscrapers are humanised. The Empire State Building is in bed with the Chrysler Building. Then, opening the door, 30 Rockefeller Plaza arrives and shines its beam of light on the couple lying there. Architectural orgy or adultery? The title tells us: Flagrant Délit. All around are symbols of the Big Apple. The bedside rug is a grid of the city, complete with Central Park, and there is a deflated airship—a used condom (the Empire State Building’s spire had been designed for airship docking).

The second image we’ll use to understand the culture and urban hubris of New Amsterdam is a 1976 cover of "The New Yorker". This too – a hugely famous piece – is a drawing by Saul Steinberg – postcards of it are even sold in trendy bookshops – and is called "View of the World from 9th Avenue". Manhattan is at the centre of the world. This is New York chauvinism at its finest, where the rest of the globe is reduced to tiny squares of land, whilst we see the details and people of the Upper West Side. As is often the case, these champions of ‘New York-ness’ are not natives. Nor are they even Anglo-Saxon. Vriesendorp and Koolhaas: Dutch. Steinberg: a Romanian who fled anti-Semitism and arrived in Italy – attending the Milan Polytechnic, then known as the ‘Regio Politecnico’ – and then fled once more to the US when racial laws were introduced here too. Steinberg was, in fact, an architect. The eye of the migrant, the expat, the refugee, blends with that of the Polytechnic graduate. In his drawings, perspective and spatiality are always central to the composition. Steinberg joined the army of his new homeland and was sent all over the world – to China, North Africa, Calcutta, and back to Italy. This suited The New Yorker, with whom he collaborated, perfectly, given that the magazine had always refused to publish photographs – “We’re not Life” – and so the war reports were accompanied by the drawings of this 27-year-old Romanian Jew.

His writing helps readers understand what is happening on the battlefields. That world – its characters and physical spaces – is then brought together in his first book, now republished by Adelphi, "Tutto in linea", which was originally published in 1945. Inside, we find Hitler and Mussolini, volcanoes photographed by GIs, bombed-out cities, jeeps and tanks in historic city centres, and countless soldiers wandering through European cities, marvelling at the frescoes and sitting at the foot of monuments. Amidst these are also surreal images where the art lies solely in the line of the pen, and comic cartoons, such as the one foreshadowing Trump’s thirst for America’s iconic soft drink and the button on the Resolute Desk: a pilot shows his colleague the highly complex array of buttons inside the cockpit and says with a smile, ‘and this one here is for Coca-Cola’. One of the latest covers of New York magazine – launched as an anti-New Yorker alternative, less snobbish, packed with photos and recently bought by Rupert Murdoch’s liberal son – depicts the city coloured by rows of people queuing (in an illustration by Peter Arkel). “For this city that never sleeps, queuing has never been so fashionable,” says the article, which discusses how nowadays everyone queues up for the best bagel, a matcha latte, an Instagram opportunity or a Broadway show – the buildings are merely a backdrop to these experiences and the consumption of carbohydrates.