Flowers and Ink Bottles 1985

Editor: So here we have "Flowers and Ink Bottles," a mixed-media piece from 1985 by Saul Steinberg. There's almost a cartoonish feel to it, with the slightly clumsy lines and skewed perspective. What do you see in this piece, beyond a simple still life? Curator: It's funny you say cartoonish because, for me, this artwork breathes life back into the genre of still life by turning it into an exercise in observing your ordinary surroundings in an extraordinarily clever way. There’s a quiet commentary on the life of the artist here – the flowers, suggesting fleeting beauty, juxtaposed with the ink bottles, the tools of his trade, promising permanence. The newspaper scraps seem to suggest memory. Do you think Steinberg is perhaps thinking about the nature of art? Editor: I hadn't considered that, but now that you point it out, that makes perfect sense! I was too caught up in the playful nature of the image. Do you think that by bringing together the different images and ways of making that Steinberg is also questioning how things are depicted? Curator: Absolutely. And perhaps also reminding us of how fleeting everything is in time – look, for instance, at the wilting of the flowers. Steinberg captures not just the visual, but the temporal; there is also something melancholic here that reflects the passing of time and things left unsaid. I think he might have wanted the piece to offer more questions than answers. Editor: It’s amazing how much depth there is, hidden in such a seemingly simple picture. The composition, at first glance, seemed almost random, but now it appears incredibly deliberate and even meaningful. Curator: Yes, isn’t that the lovely trick of art? The more you observe, the more it speaks back. I can't help but feel I will continue to discover meaning within its unassuming layers over time.