{{Short description|American artist (1922–2001)}} {{Use mdy dates|date=October 2018}} {{Infobox person | name = Jim Steg | image = | alt = | caption = | birth_name = | birth_date = 1922 | birth_place = Alexandria, Virginia | death_date = 2001 | death_place = | nationality = | other_names = | occupation = Artist, printmaker | years_active = | known_for = | notable_works = }} '''Jim Steg''' (1922–2001) was an artist, printmaker, and professor based in New Orleans, Louisiana. Considered the most influential printmaker to be based in New Orleans in the twentieth century,<ref name=Lord>{{cite web|last1=Lord|first1=Russell|title=Jim Steg: New Work|url=https://noma.org/exhibitions/jim-steg-new-work/#about|publisher=New Orleans Museum of Art|access-date=April 2, 2018}}</ref> Steg made a substantial impact on printmaking in New Orleans through his own work and over his 43-year tenure as a professor of printmaking at Newcomb College.<ref name="Burton">{{cite web|last1=Burton|first1=Tony|title=Sculptor and Printmaker James Steg Spent the Summer of 1958 in Ajijic|url=http://lakechapalaartists.com/?p=5860|website=Lake Chapala Artists|access-date=April 9, 2018}}</ref> Over the course of a long artistic career that saw him engage with several 20th century art movements, Steg used nearly every known printmaking technique and invented some of his own.<ref name=Lord />
== Early life == Born in Alexandria, Virginia but raised on a farm in Upstate New York, James Louis Steg lived a quiet childhood between the two World Wars. He showed both a keen interest and a natural talent in drawing from an early age, and dreamed of becoming a cartoonist.<ref name=Catalog /> While still in high school, he traveled to Chicago to attend a workshop at the Art Institute, where he would receive his first formal artistic training and sketch his first live figure at age 16.<ref name=Catalog />
== WWII Ghost Army == thumb|left|A patch with Ghost Army insignia thumb|right|An inflatable tank used by the Ghost Army, WWII When WWII broke out, Steg enlisted in the United States Army, where his artistic training was put to use in a tactical unit known as the Ghost Army.<ref name="Krane">{{cite web|last1=Krane|first1=Margaux|title=NOMA recognizes Ghost Army veteran and printmaking pioneer in Jim Steg: New Work|date=March 29, 2017 |url=https://noma.org/noma-recognizes-ghost-army-veteran-printmaking-pioneer-jim-steg-new-work/|publisher=New Orleans Museum of Art|access-date=April 4, 2018}}</ref> The Ghost Army was made up of 1000 soldiers with artistic backgrounds, including such future titans as Abstract Expressionist Ellsworth Kelly and fashion designer Bill Blass,<ref name=Horyn>{{cite news|last1=Horyn|first1=Cathy|title=Design a Tank? Yes, a Fake One|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/fashion/the-ghost-army-of-artists-and-designers.html|access-date=April 4, 2018|work=The New York Times|date=May 17, 2013}}</ref> who were tasked with using their skills to deceive the enemy. Steg and the other members of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops created and deployed fake inflatable tanks to fool the Germans into thinking Allied troops were nearby, impersonated radio operators to send false intel over the airwaves, and committed several other forms of creative espionage.<ref name=Horyn /><ref>{{cite web|last1=Garber|first1=Megan|title=Ghost Army: The Inflatable Tanks That Fooled Hitler|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/ghost-army-the-inflatable-tanks-that-fooled-hitler/276137/|website=The Atlantic|date=May 22, 2013 |access-date=April 4, 2018}}</ref> Steg and a number of other artists in the unit showed their work at an attic gallery in their barracks in Briey, France, in the last months of the war (in between trips to the front). Jim appears to have been responsible for designing the notices for the exhibitions.<ref>{{cite web |title=James Louis Steg |url=https://ghostarmy.org/roster/James-Louis-Steg/ |website=The Ghost Army Legacy Project |access-date=3 January 2026}}</ref> Jim Steg's experience as a member of the Ghost Army would make an enormous impact on both his life and his art.<ref name=Krane />
The Ghost Army unit proved to be a fruitful creative environment. Steg, along with his comrades Bill Blass and Jack Masey, organized temporary exhibitions of their wartime art; one was staged in the attic of a deserted church.<ref name="Fosberg">{{cite news|last1=Fosberg|first1=S. Joslyn|title=Interview: Jim Steg – Artist as Craftsman|issue=August 1–7, 1974|publisher=The Courier-Bozart}}</ref> During this time, Steg created his first mature body of work, a series of graphite and watercolor portraits of civilians, soldiers, and refugees that he called "spontaneous impressions."<ref name="KnowLA">{{cite web|last1=Lord|first1=Russell|title=Jim Steg: Restlessly Inventive|url=http://www.knowlouisiana.org/restlessly-inventive|website=Know Louisiana|access-date=April 4, 2018|archive-date=July 17, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180717183852/http://www.knowlouisiana.org/restlessly-inventive|url-status=dead}}</ref> These works are given a haunting quality with context, as many of the Russian refugee subjects portrayed (who often signed their own names next to Steg's) would not survive their return to Russia.<ref name=Krane />
== Early work and career: 1945–1960 == After the war, Steg arrived in New York City, where he was given his first solo show at the Weyhe Gallery exhibiting the portraits he had made in combat.<ref name="Reed">{{cite news |last1=Reed |first1=Judith Kaye |title=Overthere, Overhere |publisher=The Art Digest |date=September 15, 1945}}</ref> In a contemporary interview about the exhibition, Steg described his subjects as "the people of Europe ... The little men of the streets ... The people who suffered the most during the war."<ref name=Catalog /><ref>{{cite book|last1=Riley|first1=Maude Kemper|title=Limited Edition|date=1945|edition=October–December 1945}}</ref> At Weyhe Gallery, which was and still is focused on American fine art prints, Steg's interest in printmaking was piqued. Soon after his exhibition, he enrolled in the University of Iowa's newly established MFA program in printmaking.<ref name="Catalog">{{cite book|last1=Lord|first1=Russell|title=Jim Steg: New Work|date=2017|publisher=New Orleans Museum of Art|page=19|url=https://issuu.com/mcdegnan/docs/19-0117_jim_steg_booklet-lowres}}</ref> There, under the tutelage of noted Argentine-American printmaker Mauricio Lasansky, Steg began to incorporate more abstract and cubist influences into his work, which had previously been exclusively figurative.<ref name=Catalog />
Steg's early prints of the late 1940s were mainly engravings, and etchings.<ref name="Fern">{{cite news |last1=Fern |first1=Alan |title=Introduction: Thirty Years of J.L. Steg |year=1978}}</ref> He then began to experiment with woodblock printing and etching in the early 1950s. In 1951, Steg accepted a position as professor of printmaking at Newcomb College at Tulane University, a position he would hold until his retirement in 1992.<ref name="Loupe">{{cite news |last1=Loupe |first1=Valerie |title=Thirty Years of J.L. Steg ... 1948–1978 |agency=Arts Quarterly |issue=4 |publisher=New Orleans Museum of Art |year=1978|volume=1 }}</ref> He continued to push the boundaries of his art during his tenure at Newcomb College, experimenting with the serigraph process, collagraphy, lithography, and toner drawings, among others.<ref name=Lord />
==Innovations and accolades: 1960–1975== Beginning in the early 1960s, Steg was represented by the famed New York City gallery Associated American Artists, resulting in Steg's first New York Times feature in 1963.<ref name="Canaday 1963">{{cite news |last1=Canaday |first1=John |title=TREES, SKY, ETC.; The Revival of Interest in Landscape Shows Up in Some Fine Prints Landscape Plus Varieties |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1963/08/11/archives/trees-sky-etc-the-revival-of-interest-in-landscape-shows-up-in-some.html |work=The New York Times |date=August 11, 1963}}</ref> Steg's printmaking reached its apex in the mid-1960s, "when he introduced photographic images into his intaglio plates."<ref name=Fern /> This innovation to combine photoresist etchings with the intaglio process put Steg on the forefront of American printmaking, alongside contemporaries like Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol.<ref name=Fern /> Steg was "one of the first artists to begin using photoresist etching in a collage-like fashion and to combine it with other printmaking processes."<ref name =Catalog/> Steg's work in this new process was shown alongside the work of 18 other artists in the 1968 exhibition "Photography in Printmaking" at Associated American Artists, and was compared favorably to Warhol's silkscreen paintings of Jacqueline Kennedy in a contemporary New York Times review.<ref name="Canaday 1968">{{cite news |last1=Canaday |first1=John |title=Printmakers as Hybridizers |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1968/08/25/archives/printmakers-as-hybridizers.html |work=The New York Times |date=August 25, 1968}}</ref>
In the early 1970s, Steg began to explore the human figure in a new way by "[using] his own body as an implement, often rolling his face across a prepared plate to create a flattened, stretched representation whose ultimate appearance was dictated somewhat by chance."<ref name=Catalog /> This new technique blended the abstract with the figurative, producing striking prints such as those from his ''Seven Attributes'' series of 1972.<ref name=Bio /> These prints succeeded in developing "his own visual language" and "establishing [Steg] as a unique voice in the field."<ref name=Catalog />
==Late-career successes: 1975–1995== While Steg's work received favorable coverage in New York City and abroad, he was primarily recognized as a teacher, rather than as a fine artist, in his adopted home of New Orleans.<ref name="Bio">{{cite web |title=About the Artist |url=https://www.jimsteg.com/about/ |website=jimsteg.com |access-date=July 4, 2018 |archive-date=July 17, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180717014537/https://www.jimsteg.com/about/ |url-status=dead }}</ref> Residing in New Orleans rather than New York City, the center of the contemporary art world, prevented Steg from doing the necessary self-promotion required to reach a large audience; Steg remarked cynically on this fact in a 1967 interview with the Tulane newspaper: "an artist can become rich through high pressure promotion. This doesn't make for good art, but for successful artists."<ref name="Hullabaloo">{{cite news |last1=Schulman |first1=Paul |title=Visual Awareness Low – Artist |publisher=The Tulane Hullabaloo |date=March 10, 1967}}</ref> In a 1974 interview, Steg decried both the conservative New Orleans art market and Newcomb College's long history of decorative art, rather than fine art, as reasons his national and international reputation flourished while his local renown lagged behind.<ref name=Fosberg /> The author, longtime New Orleans art critic Joslyn Fosberg, conferred: "Jim Steg makes prints. They are known the world over ... But he is hardly known here."<ref name=Fosberg /> This trend was corrected in 1978 with ''Thirty Years of J.L. Steg: 1948–1978,'' Steg's first solo retrospective at the New Orleans Museum of Art,<ref name=Loupe /> which secured Steg's place in the pantheon of twentieth century New Orleans artists, alongside painters George Dunbar and Ida Kohlmeyer and photographer Clarence John Laughlin.<ref name="McLellan">{{cite news |last1=McLellan |first1=Marian |title=J.L. Steg's Carnal Spirit |volume=XIII|issue=5 |publisher=New Orleans Art Review |date=Spring 1995}}</ref><ref name="Standish">{{cite news |last1=Standish |first1=Dana |title=Nuclear Construction |work=Gambit Weekly |date=February 5, 1983}}</ref>
==Death and posthumous exhibitions== Jim Steg died in 2001 at the age of 79. His obituary was written by Daniel Piersol, then Curator of Prints and Drawings at the New Orleans Museum of Art, who remembered him as "one of America's most distinguished printmakers."<ref name="Piersol">{{cite news |last1=Piersol |first1=Daniel |title=James Steg Remembered}}</ref> In the years since his death, Steg's archive has been meticulously maintained by his widow, Frances Swigart Steg.<ref name=Bio /> The Jim Steg Collection, managed by Swigart Steg, numbers over 1,000 works and includes "collagraphs, charcoal drawings, serigraphs, woodcut prints, sculptures, ink toner drawings, photoresist etchings, aquatints, color etchings, and paintings"<ref>{{cite web |title=The Jim Steg Collection |url=https://www.jimsteg.com/the-collection-1/ |website=jimsteg.com |access-date=July 4, 2018 |archive-date=July 17, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180717183705/https://www.jimsteg.com/the-collection-1/ |url-status=dead }}</ref>
In 2017, the New Orleans Museum of Art debuted ''Jim Steg: New Work,'' the first solo museum retrospective of Steg's work since his previous NOMA show in 1978.<ref name=Lord /> Staged in the museum's Templeman Galleries and numbering over 40 works spanning the length of the artist's career, ''Jim Steg: New Work'' highlighted Steg's contribution to twentieth century printmaking both in New Orleans and beyond.<ref name= Krane />
== References == {{Reflist}}
== External links == * [http://www.jimsteg.com/ jimsteg.com]
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Steg, Jim}} Category:1922 births Category:2001 deaths Category:American printmakers Category:United States Army personnel of World War II