Ben Shahn, “Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco,” element, from The Ardour of Sacco and Vanzetti collection element (1931–32), gouache on paper on board (all pictures Isabella Segalovich/Hyperallergic)
What makes a prophet? Whether or not or not we imagine that Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel had a direct line to God, many have a tendency to think about them as particular person individuals with radical and revolutionary concepts, standing proud and alone amid the decadence and conformity round them. However in keeping with theologian Walter Brueggemann, the prophets didn’t work alone. They have been merely the mouthpieces for the communities during which they lived, labored, cried, celebrated, and arranged. Whether or not in religious texts or on the frontline of protests for human rights as we speak, it isn’t from lone geniuses, however from “prophetic communities” that now we have acquired the concepts which have shattered and reshaped the world.
I think about that the curators of Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity, presently on view on the Jewish Museum, would agree with me that this legendary leftist Jewish artist was a prophetic determine. However we’d probably disagree about what meaning. This uncommon exhibition succeeds in exhibiting Shahn’s breadth and flexibility, each by way of his selection of medium and the massive vary of topics he took on. However regardless of acknowledging his a long time of labor as a part of organized teams preventing for his or her imaginative and prescient of a racially and economically simply world, the exhibit frames Shahn as a lone crusader towards oppression — admirable however typically unobtrusive. He’s made digestible, predictable, protected.
Ben Shahn, “The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti” (1931–32), tempera on canvas mounted on composition board
It could not look that method at first. The present begins along with his portray titled “The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti” (1931–32) set towards a blood-red wall. Three judges gaze down on the coffins containing the graying our bodies of the 2 well-known Italian anarchists, probably falsely accused of homicide. Their faces are smug, mildly irritated, even bored. Directly reasonable and barely distorted, Shahn’s thick, wavering traces retain his trademark scratchy texture and vibrant hues. Subsequent to the portray is the quote from Shahn that provides the present’s title:
Nonconformity is the fundamental pre-condition of artwork, as it’s the fundamental pre-condition of fine considering and subsequently of progress and greatness in a individuals. The diploma of nonconformity current — and tolerated — in a society could be appeared upon as a symptom of its state of well being.
The rooms that observe show a pleasant pattern of Shahn’s work: posters he created whereas directing the Graphic Arts Division on the newly shaped Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and taking part within the antifascist efforts of the Workplace of Conflict Data (OWI); pictures he took for the Resettlement Administration/Farm Safety Administration (RA/FSA) exhibiting the plight and energy of American farmers throughout the Mud Bowl; and political cartoons for the Progressive Occasion poking enjoyable at politicians. These are introduced alongside a powerful swath of his work, from surreal dreamscapes memorializing the horrors of the Holocaust to flame-engulfed monsters that increase alarm in regards to the risks of nuclear warfare to bittersweet reflections on the great thing about on a regular basis life. The ultimate gallery reveals his late-in-life foray into Hebrew lettering, together with illustrations of traditional Jewish texts, which without delay provide tender consolation to their viewers and invoke the cosmic eternity of God’s energy.
Ben Shahn, “Study for Great State of Wisconsin mural” (c. 1937), gouache, ink, and pencil on illustration board
Ben Shahn, close-up view of “Study for Great State of Wisconsin mural”
However we get barely a glimmer of one in every of Shahn’s most resplendent eras: the New Deal murals. The exhibit consists of only one small portray, a examine for a mural entitled “The Great State of Wisconsin,” with no context, or rationalization that the mural proposal was rejected (it’s unclear why).
Solely within the catalog can we be taught that the artist labored alongside Diego Rivera, who stated Shahn’s works “possess the necessary qualities, accessibility, and power to make them important to the proletariat.” Particularly, Shahn labored in 1933 on Rivera’s “ill-fated” Rockefeller Middle mural “Man at a Crossroads,” destroyed by Nelson Rockefeller when he discovered it contained a portrait of Vladimir Lenin. However the catalog couches even this explicitly Marxist second as simply one other step in Shahn’s profession, describing him studying “composition and fresco technique” and witnessing the “breakdown of the professional working relationship between artists and patrons of opposing political ideologies.” It reads extra like a resume than a historic second in company America’s appeasement of fascist forces within the 12 months Hitler got here to energy.
Ben Shahn, assisted by John Ormai, “Harvesting Wheat [study for the west wall of The Meaning of Social Security mural, Washington, DC]” (1941), buon fresco on wallboard
A examine for Shahn’s “The Meaning of Social Security” reveals a single farmer, leaning on his equipment throughout a brief break from his work. It’s a lovely portray — the person, content material with the fruits of his labor, smiles subtly, framed by the comfortable leaves of an orange tree. However by singling out this examine, the present successfully separates this man from his neighborhood. Right here, the farmer is valued not for his solidarity along with his fellow employees, however just for what he can produce alone.
Time and again on this exhibition, in ways in which usually appear opposite to Shahn’s obvious intent, the person is privileged over the neighborhood. Gone are the receding crowds of immigrants and the lengthy traces of employees that exude a way of energy. In giving these masterworks solely a short point out, we not solely lose a way of Shahn’s improvement as an artist, from the graceful contours of a New Deal muralist to the coarse fields of colour, sharp angles, and wily humor that defines his work, however we additionally lose a way of the custom out of which he grew. Shahn seems to be pigeonholed right into a type of socially acceptable Chilly Conflict liberalism. (The catalog even implies that one in every of his work supported the brand new Israeli state, when he stated nothing of the type. He hardly ever commented on Israel’s existence, a robust assertion in its personal proper.) Like the topics of his paintings, Shahn, too, will get faraway from his communal and organizational context. He’s merely a “nonconformist.”
Offered this fashion, it’s obscure Shahn’s rise and fall. Although usually forgotten as we speak, he was one of the vital sought-after artists of the mid-Twentieth century. He illustrated for CBS, Time, Fortune, and Harper’s, had solo reveals on the Museum of Fashionable Artwork, and even represented america within the Venice Biennale. His fall from grace, left principally a thriller on this exhibit, is defined by critic Ariella Budick within the Monetary Instances: the FBI “placed him under surveillance, CBS added his name to a blacklist, and, in 1959, he was summoned to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee.” Receiving a “chilly treatment” from “collectors and ideologues” who most popular outwardly apolitical Summary Expressionism, he “became increasingly marginalised, his slow fade-out only briefly interrupted by the raft of obituaries and posthumous praise that appeared on his death in 1969.”
Ben Shahn, “East Side Soap Box,” element (1936), gouache on paper. Translation of the Yiddish: “Nature has given every [worker] an appetite, but our bosses took away from us the key [to our sustenance].”
The catalog bafflingly claims that “Shahn’s figurative realism and social content served as a symbol of U.S. freedom in the early Cold War—as much as abstract art did,” when the reality was that Summary Expressionism was actively promoted by the rich and highly effective, together with the CIA, to stamp out political artwork like Shahn’s. The artist himself minced no phrases: “If Social Realism seeks to impress upon art a rigid aesthetic of subject matter and point of view, there also exists another opposite camp which seeks with equal rigidity to exile from art all meaning—to keep it free from any content whatsoever. That is the camp of Pedantism.”
Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity gives these with out prior data of leftist Jewish artwork a uncommon reward: a large-scale retrospective of one of many best suppressed artists of the Twentieth century. However they’ll depart the Jewish Museum with an incomplete and skewed understanding of his legacy. They could assume that he was a singular determine with a unique perspective, moderately than a very gifted luminary inside a wealthy and persevering with line of fellow Jewish political artists, from the well-known, like El Lissitsky, to the little mentioned, like Selma Freeman. Many of those artists have been influenced by Jewish people tales and aesthetics (the likes of which have been practiced by Shahn’s personal anti-Czarist and woodcarving father), which translated splendidly into political cartoons, posters, and murals that referred to as for justice for working individuals all over the world. It’s to this prophetic neighborhood, transcending time and nationwide boundaries, that Ben Shahn correctly belongs. If we’re to be taught from his work — as nicely we should always — we should perceive that “nonconformity” just isn’t, and can’t be, a solo enterprise.
Ben Shahn, “Liberation” (1945), gouache on board
Ben Shahn, “Stop H Bomb Tests” (1960), colour display print
Ben Shahn, “Today Is the Birthday of the World” (1955), ink on paper. Translation of the Hebrew: “Today the world is born; today shall stand before You. All the beings of the cosmos, whether as Your children or as Your servants. If as Your children, show them mercy, like a mother toward her children. If as Your servants, then our eyes are turned toward You in great anticipation. That You may be gracious, rendering judgment for good, on our behalf, as clear as light of day.” (Recited on Rosh Hashanah, origin unknown)
Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity continues on the Jewish Museum (1109 Fifth Avenue, Higher East Aspect, Manhattan) by October 12. The exhibition was organized by Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, and tailored by the Jewish Museum, and curated by Laura Katzman in collaboration with Stephen Brown.
