Autogeography. Saul Steinberg as Narrator of Spaces, from Self-mythology to City Criticism
Abstract
For over 60 years, Saul Steinberg (1914-1999) used his pen to explore a wide range of spaces, from the piazzas and arcades of Italy to the main streets and brownstones of the United States. Places he lived in and that he remembered, but also criticized. This essay aims to revisit some of the steps of Steinberg’s “autogeography,” following as a leitmotif the idea of inhabitable space which prefers a continuous metamorphosis of functions to over-defined boundaries. Through his drawings, Steinberg offers a fragmentary yet remarkably coherent contribution to the twentieth-century debate on the urban environment, alongside those of Bernard Rudofsky and Le Corbusier.
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References
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