Art Market Monitor

Global Coverage ~ Unique Analysis

  • AMMpro
  • AMM Fantasy Collecting Game
  • Podcast
  • Contact Us

Leo Steinberg

March 14, 2011 by Marion Maneker

The great art historian Leo Steinberg is dead. New York Times Critic Ken Johnson explains why he was important:

In a field not noted for lively prose, Mr. Steinberg gave academic writing a personal voice: didactic, often urgently polemical, yet generously ruminative, enriched by vivid metaphors, strewn with unfamiliar vocabulary and sometimes idiosyncratic coinages but blessedly free of jargon.

“What he avoids above all is the finishing touch,” Mr. Steinberg wrote of Rodin, “his secret dream being to keep every work going like a stoked fire — forever, if possible.”

In 1983 Mr. Steinberg became the first art historian to receive an award for literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. His writing skill drew on his own deep reading of literature. “He knew Dickens and Joyce inside out, and he had a better knowledge of Shakespeare and the English novel than many professionals in the field,” Helen Vendler, the critic and English professor at Harvard, said in an interview. She befriended him after he gave the Norton Lectures there in 1995-96.

Leo Steinberg, Art Historian, Dies at 90 (New York Times)

 

More from Art Market Monitor

  • Vernissage TV: ArtBasel Miami Beach 2013Vernissage TV: ArtBasel Miami Beach 2013
  • Art Basel: Where the Dealers Are More Nervous Than the BuyersArt Basel: Where the Dealers Are More Nervous Than the Buyers
  • Warhol Makes $56.5m Hammer @ Phillips Carte BlancheWarhol Makes $56.5m Hammer @ Phillips Carte Blanche
  • Brant OpeningBrant Opening
  • David Bowie Sale = £24.3mDavid Bowie Sale = £24.3m
  • Christie's NY Prints and Multiples ResultsChristie's NY Prints and Multiples Results

Filed Under: Retrospectives

About Marion Maneker

LiveArt

Want to get Art Market Monitor‘s posts sent to you in our email? Sign up below by clicking on the Subscribe button.

  • About Us/ Contact
  • Podcast
  • AMMpro
  • Newsletter
  • FAQ

twitterfacebooksoundcloud
Privacy Policy
Terms & Conditions
California Privacy Rights
Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Advertise on Art Market Monitor