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Modern? American? Jew? Museums and Exhibitions of Ben Shahn's Late Paintings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Diana L. Linden
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Extract

The year 1998 marked the centennial of the birth of artist Ben Shahn (1898–1969). Coupled with the approach of the millennium, which many museums celebrated by surveying the cultural production of the 20th century, the centennial offered the perfect opportunity to mount a major exhibition of Shahn's work (the last comprehensive exhibition had taken place at the Jewish Museum in New York City in 1976). The moment was also propitious because a renewed interest in narrative, figurative art, and political art encouraged scholarly and popular appreciation of Ben Shahn, whose reputation within the history of American art had been eclipsed for many decades by the attention given to the abstract expressionists. The Jewish Museum responded in 1998 with Common Man, Mythic Vision: The Paintings of Ben Shahn, organized by the Museum's curator Susan Chevlowe, with abstract expressionism scholar Stephen Polcari (Figure 1). The exhibition traveled to the Allentown Art Museum in Pennsylvania and closed at the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1999.

Smaller Shahn exhibitions then in the planning stages (although not scheduled to open during the centennial year) were to focus on selected aspects of Shahn's oeuvre: the Fogg Museum was to present his little-known New York City photographs of the 1930s in relationship to his paintings, and the Jersey City Museum intended to exhibit his career-launching series, The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti (1931–32). Knowing this, Chevlowe smartly chose to focus on the later years of Shahn's career and on his lesser-known easel paintings of the post-World War II era. In so doing, Chevlowe challenged viewers to expand their understanding both of the artist and his place in 20th-century American art.

Type
Research Article
Information
Prospects , Volume 30 , October 2005 , pp. 665 - 684
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2005

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References

This work is indebted to three wonderful people who have influenced my thinking about museum education, Shahn, and Jewish identity in the arts: Matthew Baigell, Frances K. Pohl, and Nancy Jones. My thanks to David Brody, John Davis, Judy Endelman, Todd Endelman, Jonathan Karp, Norman Kleeblatt, and Peter Ross for their helpful suggestions and criticisms. The curatorial, education, and public relations staffs at the Jewish Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) all graciously answered numerous questions. I especially thank Susan Chevlowe, Curator at the Jewish Museum; and Nancy Jones, Director of Education, Jennifer Czajkowski, Associate Educator, and Rebecca Hart, Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, all at the DIA. Earlier versions of this essay were presented at the American Studies Association Annual Meeting, Montreal, October 1999, and at the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies (CJS) Conference, University of Pennsylvania, May 2001. I thank David Ruderman and the staff of the CJS for the opportunity to spend 2000–2001 at the center.

Art by Ben Shahn. © Estate of Ben Shahn and licensed by VAGA, New York, N.Y.

1. See Prescottg, Kenneth W.'s exhibition catalog, Ben Shahn, a Retrospective, 1898–1969 (New York: Jewish Museum, 1976)Google Scholar.

2. The itinerary for the retrospective, which circulated from October 1977 through January 1978, was as follows: in 1977 at the Jewish Museum, New York, October 20–January 2; University of Georgia Art Museum, Athens, January 27–March 17; Maurice Spertus Museum of Judaica, Chicago, April 11–May 29; University of Texas at Austin Art Museum, June 23–August 11; Cincinnati Art Museum, September 5–October 24; and the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, November 17, 1977–January 15, 1978.

3. Kao, Deborah Martin, Katzman, Laura, and Webster, Jenna, Ben Shahn's New York: The Photography of Modern Times (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000)Google Scholar; and Anreus, Alejandro, ed., Ben Shahn and the Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2001)Google Scholar. The latter is an exhibition catalog with contributions by Laura Katzman, Diana L. Linden, Frances K. Pohl, and Nunzio Pernicone.

4. Chevlowe, Susan, ed., Common Man, Mythic Vision: The Paintings of Ben Shahn (New York: Jewish Museum, 1998)Google Scholar. This exhibition catalog includes contributions by Chevlowe, Diana L. Linden, Stephen Polcari, and Frances K. Pohl. See also Polcari, Stephen, Abstract Expressionism and the Modern Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)Google Scholar.

5. One scholar, who does write both on Shahn and on Abstract Expressionism, yet focuses primarily on Jewish aspects within their work, is Matthew Baigell. He claims that, along with Barnett Newman, Shahn created the most significant body of Jewish religious art of any American artist during the 1950s and 1960s. See these essays by Baigell, Matthew: “Ben Shahn's Postwar Jewish Paintings,” in Artist and Identity in Twentieth-Century America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 212–31, 282–84Google Scholar; and, in the same volume, “Barnett Newman's Stripe Paintings and Kabbalah: A Jewish Take,” 232–42, 284–85.

6. Sandler, Irving, The Triumph of American Painting: A History of Abstract Expressionism (New York: Harper and Row, 1970)Google Scholar.

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8. I draw upon my experience as an essayist for the exhibition catalog; participant in one of two scholars' forums at the Jewish Museum during the planning stage; trainer of docents at the DIA; and speaker during the show's run there. While intimately familiar with the exhibition, I had no control over its content. Indeed, mine was the only catalog essay to deal with works that predate the postwar easel paintings at the heart of the exhibition. See my essay “Ben Shahn's New Deal Murals: Jewish Identity in the American Scene,” in Common Man, Mythic Vision, 37–66Google Scholar.

9. For studies that treat Shahn's Farm Security Administration/Resettlement Administration (FSA/RA) photographs and specifically his Southern photographs, I admire the work of Susan H. Edwards. See her “Ben Shahn and the American Racial Divide,” in Intersections: Lithography, Photography, and the Traditions of Printmaking, ed. Howe, Kathleen Stewart (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998), 77–85Google Scholar; and “Ben Shahn: The Road South,” History of Photography 19 (Spring 1995): 13–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a discussion of the formal relationship between Rivera's and Shahn's work, see O'Connor, Francis V., “The Influence of Diego Rivera on the Art of the United States During the 1930s and After,” in the exhibition catalog Diego Rivera: A Retrospective (Detroit: Detroit Institute of the Arts, 1986), 166–70Google Scholar.

10. For further information on the Jersey Homesteads mural, see my essay “Ben Shahn's New Deal Murals: Jewish Identity in the American Scene,” in Chevlowe, , Common Man, Mythic Vision, 41–50Google Scholar. Two important articles on the mural include Pohl, Frances K.'s “Constructing History: A Mural by Ben Shahn,” Arts Magazine (09 1987): 36–40Google Scholar; and Piatt, Susan Noyes's “The Jersey Homesteads Mural: Ben Shahn, Bernarda Bryson, and History Painting in the 1930s,” in Redefining American History Painting, ed. Burnham, Patricia and Giese, Lucretia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 295–309, 283Google Scholar.

11. Because by definition an encyclopedic museum is all encompassing, for this essay, I focus on those institutions whose curatorial missions are closely aligned with the nature of Shahn's work and career: the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Jewish Museum.

12. For information on the critical and popular reception to Shahn's series from the 1930s to the present day, see my essay “What Becomes an Icon Most? The Critical Reception to Ben Shahn's ‘The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti’” in Anreus, , Ben Shahn, 89–108, 136–38Google Scholar.

13. Weinberg, Adam D., introduction to Frames of Reference: Looking at American Art, 1900–1950: Works from the Whitney Museum of American Art, ed. Venn, Beth and Weinberg, (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1999), 11Google Scholar.

14. Cultural critics Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine have written, “Every museum exhibition, whatever its overt subject, inevitably draws on the cultural assumptions and resources of the people who make it. Decisions are made to emphasize one element and to downplay others, to assert some truths and to ignore others.” See Karp, and Lavine, , “Introduction: Museums and Multiculturalism,” in Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991)Google Scholar.

15. Haskell, Barbara, The American Century: Art and Culture, 1900–1950 (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, in association with New York: W W. Norton, 1999)Google Scholar. This volume accompanied an exhibition that included two FSA/RA photographs by Shahn, , Musgrove Brothers, Westmoreland Country, Penn. (1935)Google Scholar and Cotton Pickers (1935)Google Scholar; a poster entitled Years of Dust (1937) for the FSA/RA; Bartholomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco (1931–32), tempera on paper on board, and The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti (1931–32), tempera on canvas; This is Nazi Brutality (1942), a poster for the OWI; and Reconstruction (1945).

16. Guilbaut, Serge, How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art [in French], trans. Goldhammer, Arthur (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983)Google Scholar.

17. Pohl, Frances K., Ben Shahn: New Deal Artist in a Cold War Climate, 1947–1954 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

18. Greenberg, Clement, “Art,” Nation, 11 1, 1947, 481–82Google Scholar.

19. Pohl, , Ben Shahn: New Deal ArtistCrossRefGoogle Scholar; see in particular 147–72.

20. For information on Shahn's affiliation with the CIO-PAC, see Pohl, Frances K., Ben Shahn with Ben Shahn's Writings (San Francisco: Pomegranate Art Books, 1993), 21–22Google Scholar; and her Ben Shahn: New Deal Artist, 9–33Google Scholar. See also Prescott, Kenneth W., Prints and Posters of Ben Shahn (New York: Dover, 1982), page viii, plate viiiGoogle Scholar. In 1962, MoMA's International Council organized and traveled the exhibition Ben Shahn Graphics to Baden-Baden, Zagreb, Ljubljana, Stockholm, Lund, and Jerusalem.

21. Gibson, Ann Eden, Abstract Expressionism: Other Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

22. Duncan, Carol, Civilizing Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums (London: Routledge, 1995), 104–5Google Scholar.

23. Duncan, , Civilizing Rituals, 108Google Scholar.

24. Varnedoe, Kirk with Karmel, Pepe, Jackson Pollock (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1998)Google Scholar. This is an exhibition catalog. MoMA lent the following works to the exhibition: Common Man, Mythic Vision: Portrait of Myself When Young (1943)Google Scholar, Liberation (1945), Pacific Landscape (1945), and Father and Child (1946).

25. For a discussion of Jewishness in the art of Abstract Expressionists, see Pappas, Andrea, “The Enactment of Jewish Identity and the Mythmakers — Gottlieb, Newman, and Rothko, 1939–45” (Ph.D. diss., University of Southern California, 1997)Google Scholar.

26. Gilman, Sander, Smart Jews: The Construction of Jewish Superior Intelligence (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

27. Pohl, , Ben Shahn: New Deal Artist, 28Google Scholar.

28. Shahn, Ben, The Shape of Content (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957), 48Google Scholar.

29. Rosenbaum, foreword, viii.

30. For criticism that acknowledges the importance of seeing Shahn within postwar American art, and that is appreciative of his formal accomplishments, see Lee, Anthony W., “Exhibition Review: Ben Shahn,” Apollo, 10 2000, 63–64 (based on the Detroit venue)Google Scholar; and Weinberg, Jonathan, “Ben Shahn: Picture Maker,” Art Journal 60 (Spring 2000): 104–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31. Katzman, Laura, “Art in the Atomic Age: Ben Shahn's Stop H Bomb Tests,” Yale Journal of Criticism 2 (Spring 1998): 139–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32. Polcari, , “Ben Shahn and Postwar American Art,” in Chevlowe, , Common Man, Mythic Vision, 73Google Scholar.

33. Clipping in Ben Shahn Papers, 1879–1990, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

34. Katzman, Laura, “The Politics of Media: Painting and Photography in the Art of Ben Shahn,” American Art 7 (Winter 1993): 60–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35. Pohl, , Ben Shahn: New Deal Artist, 49–50Google Scholar.

36. Conversation with Rebecca Hart, Assistant Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art, Detroit Institute of Arts, September 21, 1999.

37. See Amishai-Maisels, Ziva, “Ben Shahn and the Problem of Jewish Identity,” Jewish Art 12–13 (1986–1987): 304–19Google Scholar. I presented this argument as “Zion in the Garden State: Ben Shahn's Mural for the Jersey Homesteads,” at the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, February 2000. The DIA also unfortunately missed a great opportunity by neglecting to link Rivera's Detroit Industry murals with the Shahn exhibition; for example, they didn't place directional signs with Shahn's Soapbox in the Rivera court and vice versa.

38. This calls to mind art historian Dewey F. Mosby's comments regarding the reputation and sales of African American painter Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859–1937). Although there has been a dramatic increase in the scholarly and popular appreciation of Tanner's work during the last decade, collectors prefer his works that depict black figures — works, in other words, that broadcast the blackness of the subject and the artist — rather than his biblical scenes and seascapes.

39. “Attractions in the Galleries,” New York Sun, 04 16, 1932Google Scholar, clipping in Edith Gregor Halpert Collection, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

40. Rivera, Diego, “The Revolutionary Spirit in Modern Art,” Modern Quarterly 6 (Autumn 1932): 56–57Google Scholar.

41. Clipping, , “Current Exhibitions: Extensive One-Man Show by Ben Shahn at the Modern Museum,” New York Sun, 10 3, 1947Google Scholar, in James Thrall Soby Papers, Museum of Modern Art, New York City.

42. Kramer, Hilton, “Publicizing Social Causes of Canvas,” New York Times, 11 7, 1976, p. D23Google Scholar.

43. Liebman, Arthur, Jews and the Left (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1978)Google Scholar.

44. Pohl, Frances K., “Allegory in the Work of Ben Shahn,” in Chevlowe, , Common Man, Mythic Vision, 44–45Google Scholar. The ad “Wine, diamonds, ships, prayer shawls and you — The State of Israel” appeared in Time, 02 5, 1951, 44–45Google Scholar. As Pohl mentions, Ziva Amishai-Maisels believes that Shahn's Sound in the Mulberry Tree, 1948, which includes in Hebrew a quotation from Passage II Samuel, is the artist's indirect reference to the founding of Israel (see Amishai-Maisels, , “Ben Shahn,” 304–19Google Scholar). A different interpretation than that of Pohl is offered by Matthew Baigell, who has in the past several years been writing extensively about Jewish American art and culture, and who believes that Shahn was much more supportive of Israel than has been acknowledged. Baigell argues that Shahn's three Allegory paintings, as well as his genre painting Sound in the Mulberry Tree, 1948 are among the artist's “[v]ery strong, but very coded statements made in support of the still young, new country, Israel” (see Baigell, 's “Ben Shahn's Postwar Jewish Paintings,” 213–31)Google Scholar.

45. Amishai-Maisels, , “Ben Shahn,” 304–19Google Scholar.

46. Shahn, , Shape of Content, 41–42Google Scholar.

47. Novick, Peter, The Holocaust in American Life (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), 7Google Scholar.