Steinberg in ArtNews in 1970

From a 1970 article by John Ashbery:

...Steinberg considers the New Yorker drawings as separate from his other work. He calls them "homework" and "calisthenics" since, "everything has to be understood all at once. I have built a muscle through homework, so that everything else is child's play. So did Seurat, who thought of himself as a scientist. What is great in him is his vision, but technique was his camoflage.

I believe in Eliot's advice to poets: Do something else. Left to your own devices you get fat and start slumming. In the Renaissance artists were workers - builders and constructors had their say, and the artist was part of a team. Since the Impressionists (except for Seurat) art has become no homework.

The New Yorker is my 'political' world. My duty. I am formulating a subversive political message. My other drawings are political only in the sense that I am concerned with autobiography. I mind my own business, talk about myself. When I make a drawing for myself I use only my pleasure."