Ben Shahn
HUMANIST
By: Jim DeCesare
“Every picture tells a story. The condition of
the human being is the story I will tell.”
-Ben Shahn
When I was a young lad learning to draw I would sneak into my parents bedroom and flip through the pages of my mothers dusty old art books. I frequently returned to her books from the Famous Artist School circa. 1965, purchased when she was fifteen years old.
As a young boy, the books contained interesting artwork but they were way too wordy to keep my short attention span, that is, until I opened the blue book to Robert Fawcett’s chapter on Figure Drawing. At seven years of age this was my first introduction to Figure Drawing…and…to a fully nude female figure. I vividly remember the panic of being caught looking at those nude pictures, careful to put the books back exactly where I found them.
I now own those books and have an evolved perspective of Fawcett’s nudes and the wordy pages that fill the old binders. As an adult artist looking through the books, I keep returning to the art of Ben Shahn. There is something different about his art beyond technique. Shahn’s work posses an uncanny feeling. Even as a child, the pages containing Ben Shahn reproductions made me pause. Shahn’s work is referenced in a passage titled Mood in Composition. The Hall of Fame Illustrator Benjamin Stahl writes a chapter on pictorial composition referencing four illustrations, one by Ben Shahn. The heading of the page reads, The feeling must be there. Stahl writes:
The pictures on this page, each by a different artist, vary greatly by subject, technique and purpose. All, however, have one thing in common – they arose an emotional response in us. This ability to communicate feeling is the mark of a successful picture. To put emotion into our art we cannot be indifferent to our subject – we feel it with our senses, our mind and heart, our whole being. Only then can we communicate to the viewer the emotional richness of our living experience. (Stahl, 15)
The subject of feeling is a tricky topic to discuss because feeling is so ambiguous and personal. Within art circles, the topic often becomes a hot-button debate. Who is to say if a work of art has or does not have feeling? I can only speak to what I have feeling for. In my humble opinion, there is no better American Illustrator to explore the topic of feeling than Ben Shahn.
When I think of humanism I picture Masaccio’s frescos in the Brancacci Chapel of Adam and Eve Expelled from Paradise…early painted depictions of genuine human emotion. Of course, Michelangelo’s sculpture of David, perhaps the greatest humanistic symbol in Western Art History. So what is Humanism? Webster’s Dictionary defines humanism as: a doctrine, attitude, or way of life centered on human interests or values; a fitting description of the life and art of Ben Shahn.
Ben Shahn was born in Lithuania in 1896 and immigrated to the United Stated at the age of eight. Shahn was a printmaker’s apprentice in Brooklyn, New York while finishing his art school training in the evenings. Shahn was considered a radical for the posters he created for CIO Political Action committee, and the Farm Security Administration. Shahn created illustrations for prominent publications such as Look, Time, Seventeen, Fortune and Harper’s. (Reed, 296) In 1959 Ben Shahn was called in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee accused of communist sympathies. (NJN) The breadth and magnitude of Ben Shahn’s art career is vast; from his Sacco and Vanzetti Series in the thirties to his Time Magazine cover of Martin Luther King in the sixties. Ben Shahn worked as a print-maker, illustrator, painter, designer and photographer. From 1956 to 1957, Ben Shahn served as the Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University. Six popular lectures were documented in The Shape of Content published by Harvard University press in 1957. (NJN)
While investigating the life and work of Ben Shahn, I came across a wonderful short documentary film entitled, Art as Activism: The Compelling Paintings of Ben Shahn
by Lauren White created in 2009. The film provides an overview of the artist’s life as a social reformer, standing for his liberal beliefs. Ben Shahn left Lithuania with his mother because of political unrest. When Shahn was a young boy, his father was considered a radical and sent to a Siberian prison leaving behind young Shahn and his mother. From an early age, Ben Shahn experienced the ravages of social injustice. (White)
Shahn would spend a lifetime standing for social injustice beginning with a series of paintings created in response to the highly publicized execution of Nicola Sacco & Bartolomeo Vanzetti on August 23rd, 1927. Sacco and Vanzetti were Italian immigrants, considered anarchists and accused of murder during a period of anti-immigration sentimentality. “The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti” would secure Shahn’s place as both humanist and political radical. (White)
Pinpointing the height of Ben Shahn’s career is difficult. The Illustrator in America 1860-2000 has Shahn listed in the era of 1940-1950 (Reed, 296), Look Magazine lists Ben Shahn as one of the ten best artists in America in 1948 (NJN), Shahn is sent to Venice along with Willem de Kooning to represent the United States in the 1954 Venice Biennale and Shahn is very active in the fifties and sixties including his Martin Luther King cover Illustration for Time Magazine in 1965. (NJN) Ben Shahn remained steadfast in his plight to express the human condition through his work. Ben Shahn’s work was truly transcendent.
Ben Shahn’s artwork echoes the late 20th century Fauvist styles of Andre’ Derain, Henri Matisse, Braque and Russian Expressionists such as Wassily Kandinsky. In the late nineteen forties the art world began to swell with a new breed of abstract impressionists including Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell. Ben Shahn who had worked in an abstract style for nearly five decades did not consider himself an Abstract Impressionist, but rather a Realist. In 1949, The Museum of Modern Art held the first public debate regarding Abstraction versus Realism. The following is a statement written by Ben Shahn rebuking Robert Motherwell’s advocacy for Abstract Expressionism:
I think any artist, abstract or humanistic, will agree that art is the creation of human values. It may have cosmic extension. It may reflect cosmic abstraction. But however earnestly it reaches out into the never-never land of time-space, it will still always be an evaluation through the eyes of man. It may deny but can never cast off its human origin. (Shahn)
I was not alive in the nineteen fifties and sixties, but clearly Ben Shahn had a profound affect on the look and feel of those eras. I came across Peg Nochiolino’s Blog (www.blogcatalog.com/topic/ben+shahn/) discussing Ben Shahn. Nochiolino cites Murray Tinkelman describing Shahn as an, “emblematic and pivotal illustrator” and that he was a primary reason for the, “new look of illustration that started in the fifties.” Woodstock was also mentioned. (Nochiolino) Shahn’s imprint on American Illustration and Art History is profound.
The reason I paused when I came to Shahn’s work in the Famous Artist Course books, the reason his work was (and still is) far reaching is because of the enigmatic feeling the work evokes. As Benjamin Stahl described, “we feel it with our senses, our mind and heart, our whole being.” Ben Shahn needed to convey the human condition he was profoundly affected by. I am convinced Ben Shahn felt his causes in the same way Rembrandt van Rijn felt his portraits or Vincent Van Gogh felt his landscapes. Although seldom discussed, feeling in illustration, as demonstrated by the work of Ben Shahn, is vital to the creation of meaningful work.
Bibliography
NJN. Ben Shahn: Passion for Justice. www.njn.net. 2002.
Nochiolino, Peg. Ben Shahn. www.blogcatalog.com/topic/ben+shahn.
August 24, 2009.
Reed, Walt. The Illustrator in America 1896-2000. New York: The Society of
Illustrators, 2001.
Shahn, Ben. “Artist Statement.” Magazine of Art 42. November 1949.
Stahl, Benjamin. “Section 7, Advanced Pictorial Composition.” Famous Artist Painting
Course. West Port, Connecticut: Famous Artists Painting Course, Inc., 1965.
White, Lauren. Art as Activism: The Compelling Paintings of Ben Shahn. National
History Day Senior Documentary Finalist. Maryland Humanities Council, 2009.
