1983 Waldon Pictorial View of the World from Austin, Texas, w/ Artist's Signature

This is Joe Waldon's autographed 1983 pictorial view of Austin, Texas, in the Steinberg style. Emphasizing local landmarks and culture, the view is a Texan spoof of Saul Steinberg's iconic 1976 drawing, 'The World from 9th Avenue.'

A Closer Look

This view is oriented towards the north, looking down Congress Ave. towards the Texas Capitol building and the recognizable 'Tower' of the University of Texas at Austin. Other buildings in central Austin are depicted, including skyscrapers, and three buildings under construction (a reference to the city's fast pace of growth, which has continued down to the present). Waldon adds some humorous and absurdist elements, including a dog catching a frisbee in the foreground, large human and animal figures in the windows of a building at right, and many armadillos, including one mounting the Capitol building like a Texan King Kong. In the background is a map of northern Texas, including Dallas ('Big-D'), Fort Worth ('Cow-town'), and Lubbock ('Dust-ville'). Further back are several Plains States, Canada, and the North Pole. The 'Three guys from up North somewhere' is possibly a reference to Waldon himself, who was originally from Iowa.

The World from the Heart of Texas

This view is a riff off of Saul Steinberg's famous drawing 'The World from 9th Avenue' which in 1976 was featured on the cover of The New Yorker magazine. Similar to somewhat earlier 'brags' maps (see California-ornearnold-1947, NewYorker-wallingford-1939-2, and TexasBrags-randolph-1948-4, all recently listed by us), in a genre sometimes known as perception cartography, Steinberg's view humorously exaggerated a New Yorker's perspective of the world as diminutive compared to New York City, depicting Manhattan's 9th Avenue in great detail in the foreground, while the rest of the United States and the world appear as a simplified, distant landscape with only a few labels (such as 'China,' 'Japan,' and 'Russia') far off on the horizon. It plays with scale and perception, emphasizing New Yorkers' tendency to see their city as the center of everything, with the rest of the world as an afterthought. Steinberg's view spawned many imitators and, in the tradition of brags maps, other cities produced their own (mostly) good-natured responses ribbing New York City in return. Here, Waldon orients the view towards the north, keeping New York City out of frame, an implicit dig at the city.

Publication History and Census

This view was drawn by local artist and comedian Joe Waldon in 1983. We have not been able to locate the view in any institutional collections and it is very scarce to the market.