The Paintings Of Ben Shahn
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SUZANNE CHESSLER
Special to the Jewish News
en Shahn's painting East Side
Soap Box (on the cover of -
this week's Jewish News) was
not intended in any way to
be a self-portrait, but it captures the
essence of the artist who completed it.
In the rendering, a study for part of
a large mural done for Jersey
Homesteads, a homesteading commu-
nity established to house Jewish gar-
ment workers relocated from nearby
expressed publicly and dramatically in
his Jersey Homestead mural, as it was
through many of his paintings. His
work spans many decades and tackles
the controversial events of the day, as
well as larger implications.
And although Shahn was not an
observant Jew — and has been criti-
cized for removing Jewish content
from his work while being celebrated
as a Jewish artist — the teachings of
his religion are always in the back-
ground. Rather than concealing his
Jewishness, he redefined it in terms
Man,
subjective experience, including his
own childhood memories, along with
allegorical narrative content and form,"
says Susan Chevlowe. She is associate
curator at The Jewish Museum, where
the 43 works to be shown in Detroit
were selected. The entire New York
exhibit will not travel to Detroit
because of the fragility of certain pieces.
"Shahn had begun to make his
works less specific critiques of social
issues, using instead allegorical,
mythological and biblical imagery to
express personal and humanistic con-
during the Cold War era. He captured
the public imagination because it was
easy to relate to the paintings."
Shahn, born in Kovno, Lithuania, on
Sept. 12, 1898, immigrated to the
United States in 1906. In New York, he
and his family were reunited with his
father, a socialist who had been exiled to
Siberia for anti-czarist political activities.
In his personal life and ultimately his
art, Shahn gradually moved away from
religious traditions of Judaism and estab-
lished a secular identity aligned with the
causes of labor and social reform.
Painter Ben Shahn's art is a mixture of commentary on social
justice, humanitarian causes and spiritual redemption.
A special exhibit of his work, organized by The Jewish
Museum, New York, opens Sunday at the DIA.
New York City during the Great
Depression, the central figure stands
above the crowd he is addressing. The
speaker, wearing business attire, looks
very much in control.
Off to the side of the crowd is a
placard with a message, written in
Yiddish and carried by a listener. It
affirms the inalienable right of every
man and every woman: to have a job
to earn their living if they are willing
to work. Large city buildings stand tall
in the background.
In the final version of the mural, a
fresco that tells the story of Eastern
European immigration to the United .
States, the words in the placard are
written in English. Shahn chose secu-
lar, contemporary American working-
class identity over elements of religious
tradition and ritual for the final ren-
dering. But he is speaking to a major
event in the American Jewish experi-
ence: the oppressive labor and living
conditions that many Jews found in
exploitative sweatshops and tenements.
Shahn's voice on social issues was
7/23
1999
76 Detroit Jewish News
of class, labor and secular life.
Ultimately, his influence reached
inside the centers of power.
East Side Soap Box is one of 55 Shahn
works making up a traveling exhibition
that will be on view at the Detroit
Institute of Arts July 25-Oct. 31.
Planned by The Jewish Museum in New
York, "Common Man, Mythic Vision:
The Paintings of Ben Shahn" focuses on
projects completed between 1936 and
1965 and was initiated to celebrate the
100th anniversary of the artist's birth.
Two works — Composition for
Clarinets and Tin Horn and Bookshop:
Hebrew Books, Holy Day Books — are
on loan from the DIA, which had a
1956 exhibition that featured the
artist's earlier styles. Local Shahn col-
lectors have been generous in loaning
their holdings to form a companion
exhibit, "Ben Shahn and Detroit."
'Common Man, Mythic Vision'
traces the development of Shahn's
career, focusing on his mature style that
developed in response to the horrors of
World War II as he began to explore
cerns," says Chevlowe. "Personally,
also, Shahn moved from the experi-
ence of being an immigrant to that of
an American artist."
Signposts for the new and complex
directions in his later artistry come
across through the various paintings
included in the exhibition. The horrors
of war stand out in Italian Landscape,
The Red Stairway and Age of Anxiety.
Allusions to classical mythology are part
of Harpy and Prometheus. Demonic
imagery used to create allegories with
universal and multiple meanings begins
with Allegory. His return to Jewish sub-
jects appears in Third Allegory, Ram's
Horn and Menorah and When the
Morning Stars ... .
"Shahn worked during a time
when abstract expressionism was
becoming dominant but the public
and museums were accepting figura-
tive arts, and that helped to make his
art popular," Chevlowe says. "He
spoke for the average person and was
a barometer of certain feelings and
responses, such as fear and anxiety
Clockwise from top left:
"Study for Jersey Homestead Mural,"
c. 1936 Like "East Side Soap Box,"
on the front cover, this study is an early
version of the mural that tells the story
of Eastern European immigration to
the United States.
"Bookshop: Hebrew Books, Holy
Day Books," 1953. Part of the DIA's
collection, this painting was done when
Shahn returned to an exploration of
his Jewish identity. His Yiddishkeit —
the basic culture, values and belief of
Eastern European Jews — rather than
Judaism, the religious Pith, was at
the core of his identity.
"Composition for Clarinets and Tin
Horn," 1951, also on loan to the
exhibition from the DIA, features
instruments arranged like bars in a
jail cell to express the belief that artists
often are prisoners o f their own art.
"Liberation," 1945, depicts a battered
building _symbolizing postwar Europe.