LEO'S LESSONS

This article offers personal reminiscences relating to the life and work of the Russian-born American art critic and historian Leo Steinberg (1920-2011). The author describes the powerful impact on him of a lecture he heard the younger Steinberg deliver on the subject of the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), and goes on to comment on Steinberg's emphasis on sustained looking at works of art, and the importance to him of the art collection of the American collectors Victor and Sally Ganz, whose New York apartment he frequently visited. He goes on to comment on Steinberg's hedonistic attitude towards art, his ambivalent relationship with academe, the elegance of his prose, his seminal work on the American artist Jasper Johns (b.1930) and the Neo-Dada movement, and his opposition to the version of formalism represented by the leading American art critic Clement Greenberg (1909-1994). He concludes by noting Steinberg's love of literature, especially the work of James Joyce, and his respect for the Lithuanian-born American art critic and historian Meyer Schapiro (1904-1996). (Quotes from original text)