Accession Number
1977/1.181

Title
The Highway at Night

Artist(s)
Saul Steinberg

Artist Nationality
American (North American)

Object Creation Date
1954

Medium & Support
pen and wash, watercolor, and colored crayons on off-white paper

Dimensions
14 1/4 in x 22 3/4 in (36.2 cm x 57.78 cm);26 1/16 in x 32 1/16 in (66.2 cm x 81.44 cm);14 1/4 in x 22 3/4 in (36.2 cm x 57.78 cm)

Credit Line
Museum Purchase

Subject matter
In the mid 1970s, Saul Steinberg described his art from the nineteen fifties by saying: "In 1950 I did drawings more or less from life of American landscapes, streets in America, things by now vanished. No one at the time took an interest in these things." Steinberg was best known for his New Yorker covers and drawings. His architectural background and experience with architectural drafting influenced his drawing style. Steinberg began publishing cartoons in Milan in the 1930s, and his work was regularly published in the New Yorker beginning in 1941. Although Steinberg's most memorable drawing, View of the World from 9th Avenue, was his perspective of an iconic New York city scene, he was also fond of depicting imagined and less recogonized places.

Physical Description
This landscape shows a brown, black, and white line drawing of a road and the buildings along it at night. There are two rows of buildings that face each other, and a road separating them. One of the buildings in the foreground has two billboards above it, illuminated at their top edges and spilling light onto the road around them. The area behind the row of buildings in the background is very dark, and the artist's signature is in the top left corner of the paper. A vehicle with bright headlights drives down the center of the road between the buildings, towards the right. 

Primary Object Classification
Drawing

Collection Area
Modern and Contemporary

Rights
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Keywords
Romanian (culture or style)
billboards (site elements)
buildings
buildings (structures)
car
headlights
highways
modern and contemporary art
night
road
vehicles (transportation)