- " , . .. ,Jurluuy, aovemoer I I, ";:)
... items of reality remain without

(Continued from Page 11)
months-a huge Chimera-like
beast, its head wreathed in
flames, its body arched across
the figures of four recumbent
children. These latter were
dressed in very commonplace
clothes, perhaps not entirely
contemporary, but rather as I
could draw them from my own
memory."
A NEW YORK rewspaper critic,
Henry McBride, Shahn says,
"launched into a strange and an-
gry analysis of the work, attribut-
ing to it political motives, suggest-
ing some symbolism of Red Mos-
cow, drawing parallels which I
cannot recall accurately, but only
their tone of violence, completing
his essay by recommending that I,
along with the Red Dean of Can-
terbury, be deported." With re-
markable detachment, Shahn pro-
ceeds to recount the genesis of
the symbolic beast he had painted,
tracing its origin to a commiscion
fox illustrations for an acccunt of
the "Hicknman stoy:"
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painting of the red beast was a Of all the symbols which I signment did not end the matter
Chicago fire in which a colored had begun or sought to develop, for Shahn: "The narrative of the
man had lost his four children. I retained only one in my illus- fire had aroused .n me a chain of
John Barlow Martin had writ- tration - a highly formalized personal memories. There were
ten a concise reportorial ac- wreath of flames with which I two great fires in my own child-
count of the event-one of those crowned the plain shape of the hood, one only colorful, the other
stories which, told in detail, house which had burned. disastrous and unforgettable."
without any emotionalism be- But the completion of the as- Shahn continued to ponder and
ing present in the writing itself,
manages to produce a far great-myx
er emotional impact than would
a highly colored account.
SHARN tells how he began work;
he examined photographs of the
fire, he spoke with the writer, he
drew sketches and discarded them;
he pondered and drew more
sketches.z
"Cello With Chairs" (above), a -
drawing of stark simplicity, was
made in 1951 and is now in a
private collection. The tempera-
painting titled "Hunger" became x
the CIO poster (right) entitled
"We Want Peace - Register -
Vote" by the simple addition of
lettering, The tempera original is
owned by the U. S. Departmentf
of State. The poster was in the
University Museum of Art's
show in the Architecture build-
ing.

to draw, seeking shape for the
"inner figure of primitive terrord
in his mind and on canvas.
After long months of makin
and rejecting, Shahn painted "Al-
legory," reproduced as frontis-
piece to The Shape of Content:
When I at last turned the
lion-like beast into a painting,
I felt able to imbue it with ev-
erything that I had ever felt
about a fire. I incorporated the
highly formalized flames from
the Hickman story as a terrible
wreath about its head, and un-
der its body I placed the foser
child figures which, to me, hold a
the sense of all the helpless and
innocent.
THE LECTURE would be re- -
markable were it only the de-
tached account of what someoiw
decided to find in his painting as
opposed to what was true, but
Shahn does not stop there. The
fundamental artistic issue that
the newspaper critic led Shahn to
raise and attempt to answer is
precisely that of creation and cri-
ticism, not a new issue by any
means, but one that every artist
must face eventually. Shahn says:
An artist at work upon a
painting must be two people,
not one. He must function and
act as two people all the time
and in several ways. On the
one hand, the artist is the imag-
iner and the prducer. But he
is also the critic, and here is a
critic of such inexorable stan-
dards as to have made McBride
seem liberal even in his most 11-
liberal moment . . . the artist
plus the inner critic-you might
just say, the informed creator-
is present in the most fragmen-
tary piece which an artist pro-
duces . . . (Painting) is not
a spoken idea alone, nor a leg-
end, nor a simple use or inten-
tion that forms what I have
called the biography of a paint-
ing. It is rather the wholeness of
thinking and feeling within an
individual; it is partly his time
and place; it is partly his child-
hood or even his adult fears and
pleasures, and it is very greatly
his thinking what he wants to
think.
READING THIS superb essay,
one becomes aware of how
much criticism, whether on litera-
ture or art or music, is published
that contains little or nothing of
personality, and it is just that ele-
ment, with its pride and humility,
as artist in the former and critic
in the latter, that Shahn so mar-
velously demonstrates. It is not
only what he says but the "self"
he gets into the saying that makes
this a distinguished book, where
another, even in the same lecture
series by T. S. Eliot or Sir Her-
bert Read or Aaron Copland, is
but an academic exercise prelimi-
nary to picking up the honorar-
ium.
There is still to mention Shah's
wit and the pith he packs into
epigrammatic sentences w h ilh
shine bright throughout The Shape
of Content:
It may be a point of great
pride to have a Van Gogh on the -
living room wall, but the pros-
pect of having Van Gogh him-
self in the living room would put
a good many devoted art lovers
to rout.
Tomorrow's art, if it is to be
at all stirring, will no doubt be
performed upon toay's forbid-
den territory.
On a sail in a painting of a
regatta a city councilman pro-
fessed to have discovered a
Communist symbol, and he

sought to close the exhibition of
which the painting was a part.
(The symbol turned out - to be
that of a Los Angeles yachting
club.)
'THE SHA'E 'of Content" is not'
only a very goodI book, it is a
book that any thoughtful person
will be thankful for having read
just now. It is not often that a
(continued on Next Page)


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