Weekend Mop-up

The Pavarotti drawing from Sunday's Forum page was an example of a drawing not coming out as I had seen it in my mind's eye. If you could see it in my head, man, you'd think it was great. Couldn't quite get it onto the paper. Still not sure if/when/how it went astray.

The Saul Steinberg talk at the Cincinnati Art Museum on Saturday turned out to be a ball. Jeff Stahler and I got to the exhibit just an hour before the talk, so our guided tour had a fresh let's-all-discover-this-together feel. The group of thirty or so wandered through the show and stopped wherever Jeff or I wanted to comment.

As a bonus, Michael Shaw showed up. Michael is a local cartoonist whose work makes it into the New Yorker pretty frequently. He brought an issue that had a Saul Steinberg drawing on the cover and one of Shaw's cartoons inside -- what a treasure.

If you have the least bit of interest in cartooning (and why are you reading this if you don't?) I'd recommend seeing the Steinberg show if humanly possible. It's far more extensive than I'd expected -- a true retrospective -- and you'll lose yourself for hours. Maybe I'm just easily jazzed, but I got a real thrill just standing in front of the drawings themselves, though I'd seen them a hundred times in print. They are more magnificent than I could have imagined.

I felt like a minnow watching Moby Dick. It's healthy to be humbled sometimes.