
1970
In this homage to the Cubist masters Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, Saul Steinberg borrows their vocabulary to make his own Cubist still life. The curving form with a black circle alludes to the guitars often seen in early Cubist images. His brass nameplate is nailed to what appears to be a violin. The tack heads speckle a form akin to an absinthe glass, sculptures of which Picasso famously painted with polka dots. The half cylinder and the gouged-out area above it draw attention to the spatial ambiguities set up by the seemingly—but not really—overlapping planes throughout the image.