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An Uncanny Resemblance

A user in a thread on MetaFilter that linked to the US ZIPScribble Map pointed to a drawing that has an uncanny resemblance to the map: Saul Steinberg's Hen. The bloggy thing of course would have been to just take the image from somewhere and put it next to the map to show it. Instead, I asked for permission. You can probably guess how well that worked.

I am not going to make this into an "information wants to be free" thing. But. I was supposed to pay a license fee (and this is, after all, an entirely non-commercial website), but what was more was that "[any] accompanying prose text or expanded caption must be submitted for The Saul Steinberg Foundation's review and approval." Somebody needs to wake up and join the 21st century, and I don't think it's me.

To end this on a positive note, Steinberg's work is quite fascinating, and I am happy to have discovered him through this.

Posted by Robert Kosara on January 21, 2007.