LEO STEINBERG, You Are in Every Sense a Man of Many Parts

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BOWDOIN COLLEGE COMMENCEMENT 1995 LEO STEINBERG, you are in every sense a man of many parts. Born in Moscow, raised in Berlin, educated in London, and for many years now a resident of Manhattan, you give new meaning to the word cosmopolitan. This urban diversity is nothing, however, compared to your creative and scholarly range. After a distinguished career as a writer, translator, and teacher of life drawing, you decided in mid-life to become an art historian, a career change which clearly proves the adage: better late than never. After receiving your doctorate from New York University in 1960, you quickly became one of this century's most stimulating, informative and provocative scholars, an award- winning critic and a teacher of legendary reputation. Your studies of, and lectures on, the works of Michelangelo have cast new light on the confluence of genius and piety; your close reading of the works of Picasso has provided new criteria for the analysis of a modern genius; and your study of the sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art is a masterwork of exhaustive research and enlightened perception. Considering the range of your interests and accomplishments, including your ability to attract a certain amount of critical thunder and lightning, it is entirely appropriate that the University of Pennsylvania named you its Benjamin Franklin Professor of the History of Art, a position you held until your retirement in 1991. Equally appropriate is the fact that you are the first art historian to receive an award in literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, for your writings and your lectures are as famous for their eloquence as they are for their scholarly substance. Having twice held Bowdoin's Robert E. Lehman Lectureship in the fine arts, you now count the alumni and teachers of this college among those whom you have enlightened and inspired. For that, and for proving that great works of art deserve an interpreter who can bring elegance, wit, and passion to this enterprise, Bowdoin College honors you today. President Edwards, it gives me great pleasure to present to you LEO STEINBERG, for the degree of DOCTOR OF HUMANE LETTERS, honoris causa. Presented by Professor Clifton Olds.

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The Modernist Iconography of Sleep. Leo Steinberg, Picasso and the Representation of States of Consciousness
60 (1/2021), pp. 53–73 The Polish Journal DOI: 10.19205/60.21.3 of Aesthetics Marcello Sessa* The Modernist Iconography of Sleep. Leo Steinberg, Picasso and The Representation of States of Consciousness Abstract In the present study, I will consider Leo Steinberg’s interpretation of Picasso’s work in its theoretical framework, and I will focus on a particular topic: Steinberg’s account of “Picas- so’s Sleepwatchers.” I will suggest that the Steinbergian argument on Picasso’s depictorial modalities of sleep and the state of being awake advances the hypothesis of a new way of representing affectivity in images, by subsuming emotions into a “peinture conceptuelle.” This operation corresponds to a shift from modernism to further characterizing the post- modernist image as a “flatbed picture plane.” For such a passage, I will also provide an overall view of Cubism’s main phenomenological lectures. Keywords Leo Steinberg, Pablo Picasso, Cubism, Phenomenology, Modernism 1. Leo Steinberg and Picasso: The Iconography of Sleep The American art historian and critic Leo Steinberg devoted relevant stages of his career to the interpretation of Picasso’s work. Steinberg wrote several Picassian essays, that appear not so much as disjecta membra but as an ac- tual corpus. In the present study, I will consider them in their theoretical framework, and I will focus on a particular topic: Steinberg’s account of “Pi- casso’s Sleepwatchers” (Steinberg 2007a). I will suggest that the Steinber- gian argument on Picasso’s depictorial modalities of sleep and the
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s CUNY's Graduate Center. From 1969 to gela's Last Paintings (Oxford University CONFERENCE 1971, he was a CAA Board member, and Press, 1975); Borromini's Sari Carlo aIle was appo:inted Benjamin Frankl~ Quattro Fontane: A Study in Multiple Form SESSION Professor of the History of Art at the and Architectural Symbolism (Garland, University of Pennsylvania in Philadel 1977); The Sexuality of Christ in Renais HONORS phia in 1975. He retired in 1991, after sance Art and in Modern Oblivion (Univer teaching a semester as the Meyer sity of Chicago Press, 1983; the second Schapiro Chair at Columbia University :in edition:in 1996 was revised and doubled LEO New York. :in size by a "Retrospect" that responds to Steinberg has published and lectured critics); Ei1counters with Rauschenberg STEINBERG widely on Renaissance, Baroque, and (University of Chicago Press, 1999); and, most recently, Leonardo's Incessant Last he CAA Distinguished Scholar's Supper (Zone, 2001). Other writings Session was inaugurated in 2001 include studies of Filippo Lippi, T to engage senior scholars in the Mantegna, Michelangelo, Pontormo, Annual Conference and celebrate their Guercino, Rembrandt, Steen, VeHtzquez, contributions to art history. But its aim is and Picasso. Nonprofit Organization greater: At a time of great methodologi In addition to a prolific writing u.s. Postage cal shifts in the field, this session will career, Steinberg'S academic life has also foster dialogue within and among the been a full one. In 1982, he delivered the Paid different generations of art historians. s A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts at NewYork,N.Y.
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MEDIA CONTACTS: Carlotta Stankiewicz, [email protected] Penny Snyder, [email protected]
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