“I play with the absurdity of reality. There is something absurd about what we consider to be real—even what we consider to be absurd.”

Trained as an architect, Saul Steinberg’s career evolved to include set design, illustration, textile design, and other art forms. He was a renowned cartoonist who refused to distinguish between “high” and “low” arts, and drew for the New Yorker, Harper’s Bazaar, and Vogue among other publications.

Moonlight is part of a series of drawing table reliefs, for which he carved and/or painted tromp-l’ieoil objects to represent artists’ materials in these assembled works. Collage was a recurring factor in his career, often incorporated with other media such as drawing or painting. Like his later works, the table reliefs have a remarkable sense of order, almost like a diagram.