Smith, Joel 1964–

PERSONAL: Born 1964.

ADDRESSES: Office—Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ 08540.

CAREER: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, former fellow in photographs department; Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY, Fisher curator of Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, 1999–2005; Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ, curator of photography, 2005–.

AWARDS, HONORS: Jane and Morgan Whitney fellow, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Jackson Brothers fellow, Yale University.

WRITINGS:

Edward Steichen: The Early Years, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1999.

Steinberg at the New Yorker, introduction by Ian Frazier, H.N. Abrams (New York, NY), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS: Joel Smith is the author of Edward Steichen: The Early Years, a study of the life and work of photographer Edward Steichen (1879–1973) from the 1890s until World War I. Lucy Bowditch noted in an Afterimage review that, "as a celebrity photographer committed to the photo essay, Steichen was tainted by commercialism…. What has shifted is that cultural critics are now quite used to the idea of candidly discussing art in light of the consumer vortex, the swirl of all things pulled into and being generated out of a consumer culture."

Smith begins his study with Steichen's apprenticeship at the American Fine Arts Company, a lithography company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He notes that, when Steichen was in Paris from 1900 to 1902, he was successful at photographing famous writers and artists, including Auguste Rodin. Smith studies the photographs of Steichen on an individual basis, rather than trying to define his entire oeuvre. Bowditch commented that "his descriptions are marked by literary flare free of academic jargon…. In the end, Edward Steichen: The Early Years with 46 pages of text and 58 color plates, is a stunning picture book."

Steinberg at the New Yorker magazine is Smith's tribute to Saul Steinberg (1914–1999), whose cartoons filled the pages and graced the covers of the New Yorker for decades. Steinberg's cartoons were abstract and surreal; he used blank space, thin lines, and sparse shading to create his images, the earliest of which contained captions. He integrated words into his later sketches and assumed that his sophisticated New York readers would interpret the humor in his art. Smith includes work spanning six decades, including all eighty-nine of Steinberg's full-color New Yorker covers. The volume also includes illustrations for articles and unpublished work. Smith arranges the drawings by theme and offers an essay that demonstrates how much Steinberg contributed to the style of the famous publication. Savannah Schroll wrote in a Library Journal review that Smith's volume "provides a valuable window onto Steinberg's self-proclaimed patria: the New Yorker, bringing to light its mission, editorial culture, and evolution." Smith includes illustrations of the covers chronologically at the conclusion of the book, which was published on the occasion of the New Yorker's eightieth birthday. A Publishers Weekly contributor wrote that "Steinberg's cartoons usually made readers think before they laughed, and so will this splendid memorial to a 20th-century artistic landmark."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Afterimage, May, 2000, Lucy Bowditch, review of Edward Steichen: The Early Years, p. 15.

Booklist, December 15, 1999, Ray Olson, review of Edward Steichen, p. 747; April 1, 2005, Ray Olson, review of Steinberg at the New Yorker, p. 1334.

Library Journal, February 1, 2000, Kathleen Collins, review of Edward Steichen, p. 83; April 1, 2005, Savannah Schroll, review of Steinberg at the New Yorker, p. 93.

Print, July-August, 2005, Dan Nadel, review of Steinberg at the New Yorker, p. 107.

Publishers Weekly, March 28, 2005, review of Steinberg at the New Yorker, p. 70.