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| Common Man, Mythic Vision
     
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Paperback
216 pages
Princeton University Press
Published 1998
;From Library Journal
With Social Realism out of favor with many critics, the artistic reputation of American artist Ben Shahn (1898-1968) has been in decline since his death. The recent interest in Shahn's life and work evidenced in the exhibition of his later pieces at the Jewish Museum in New York City and the recent biography by Howard Greenfeld (Ben Shahn: An Artist's Life, LJ 10/1/98) is refreshing. The four essays included in this catalog cover his life, his work on various New Deal art project murals, the... read more
Book Description
Ben Shahn (1898-1969) has long been renowned for his Social Realist paintings of Depression-era America. Equally striking, however, are Shahn's extraordinary later works, which reveal a more introspective style as well as the evolution of a new allegorical and mythical pictorial language. This book combines beautiful reproductions of Shahn's art with essays by leading experts on his life and career to present a groundbreaking survey of his powerful and engaging mature style. The volume is published in conjunction with a major traveling exhibition organized by The Jewish Museum, New York, to commemorate the centenary of Shahn's birth. The book contains more than one hundred illustrations, including thirty-two in color.
Susan Chevlowe opens the book by situating Shahn's art in the context of his long and remarkable career. She explains how Shahn became disillusioned with partisan ideologies of the 1930s, moving away in the 1940s and 1950s from critiques of specific social issues to explore universal human concerns and subjective experiences, including his own childhood memories. She also explores the increasing use of allegory, myth, and biblical imagery in Shahn's later work. Diana L. Linden examines the central importance of Shahn's secular Jewish identity in shaping his artistic responses to social and political issues, immigration, and war in murals created in the New Deal era. Stephen Polcari places Shahn in |
Common Man, Mythic Vision
Susan Chevlowe; Diana L. Linden; Ben Shahn; Allentown Art Museum; & Detroit Institute of Arts |  |
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Documenting America, 1935-1943 (Approaches to American Culture, No 2)
Carl Fleischhauer (Editor); Beverly W. Brannan (Editor); & Lawrence W. Levine (Editor) |  |
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Ben Shahn's New York: The Photography of Modern Times
Deborah Martin Kao; Laura Katzman; & Jenna Webster |  |
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