Saul Steinberg (1914-1999) once said, "The life of the creative man is led, directed and controlled by boredom." (How's that for making lemonade of lemons?) Steinberg was a Romanian-born American artist, cartoonist, and illustrator, most well-known for his work that appeared in The New Yorker magazine.

A friend of Koloist and admirer of Steinberg's has a birthday coming up. One of his all-time favorite film credits was a simple, slow, left to right panning shot of a drawing by Saul Steinberg used in the Alfred Hitchcock classic: The Trouble With Harry. For the enjoyment of all those who appreciate talent and creativity (and with cheers to you, You-Know-Who-You-Are), here is a link to the clip of this film's ironic and provocative opening credits sequence: click here.

In a blog post about Steinberg's artwork for The Trouble With Harry, Lloyd Fonvielle offers interesting insight:

The delightful drawings behind the opening credits of Alfred Hitchcock's 1955 film "The Trouble With Harry" were done (uncredited) by famed New Yorker artist Saul Steinberg, riffing on images from the paintings of Paul Klee. Hitchcock was a collector of Klee's work, and may well have asked Steinberg to incorporate the homage.

The Steinberg drawings seem to echo a style in '50s design and animation called "cartoon modern" ... though of course the cartoon modern style derives from the whimsical abstractions of artists like Klee and Steinberg, not the other way around. In 1955, Klee was high-brow art, Steinberg (at least when he was publishing in The New Yorker) was middle-brow art and Hitchcock was low-brow art... for the entire article, go here.