View of the World from 9th Avenue | |
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Artist | Saul Steinberg |
Year | 1976 |
Type | Ink, pencil, colored pencil, and watercolor on paper |
Dimensions | 28 by 19 inches (71 cm × 48 cm) |
Location | Private collection |
View of the World from 9th Avenue (sometimes A Parochial New Yorker's View of the World, A New Yorker's View of the World or simply View of the World) is a 1976 illustration by Saul Steinberg that served as the cover of the March 29, 1976, edition of The New Yorker. The work presents the view from Manhattan of the rest of the world showing Manhattan as the center of the world. The work of art is an artistic representation of distorted self-importance relative to one's true place in the world that is a form of perception-based cartography humor.
View of the World has been parodied by Columbia Pictures, The Economist, Mad, and The New Yorker itself, among others.[1] The parodies all reassign the distorted self-importance to a new subject as a satire. The work has been imitated and printed without authorization in a variety of ways. The film poster for Moscow on the Hudson led to a ruling by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in Steinberg v. Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. in favor of Steinberg because of copyright violations by Columbia Pictures.
The illustration was regarded in 2005 as one of the greatest magazine covers of the prior 40 years. Similarly-themed perception-based cartoons had preceded Steinberg, notably a pair by John T. McCutcheon were published on the front page of the Chicago Tribune in the early 20th century. The 1922 McCutcheon work is regarded as an inspiration for this work.