BEN SHAH-N:

HIS PHILOSOPHY, STYLE {AND DEVELOPMENT

Thesis for the Degree of M. A.

MICHIGAN S‘EATE UNIVERSITY

JEANETTE BUDICEN ESKEDAL
1987

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ABSTRACT

BEN SHAHN:

HIS PHILOSOPHY, STYLE, AND DEVELOPMENT

by Jeanette Budicin Eskedal

This study originated out of an interest in contem—
porary American art and a desire to study further an Amer-
ican artist of significance in his time, whose style could
be considered original and whose contributions to art seemed
important. The subject was not to be an artist who merely
followed a previously established style but, rather, one
whose painting could "stand alone" and who seemed important
both as a molder of taste and style and as an initiator of
a personal approach to art. Of the possible candidates,
Ben Shahn was chosen because of the unusual quality and
character of his work, his long period of influence and
importance, and his insistence upon a personal style of
expression.

The purpose of this paper is not to discuss in detail

a large number of works by the artist, but, rather, to look

Jeanette Budicin Eskedal

carefully at the whole body of his work as it relates to

his philosophy of art. I have studied and summarized the
important characteristics of the artist's style, traced
various outside influences upon the work of the artist,

and outlined the development of his style from the thirties
to the present. Recognizing the large number of works pro-
duced by the artist and seeking the unifying factor of a
similar medium, I have limited my study to the paintings of
Ben Shahn. This paper is not necessarily presented as new
material in the field, but, instead, as a gathering together
of pertinent facts from divergent and obscure places into
one study for consideration and analysis. I have added my
personal findings where I have felt them applicable, but I
have also relied heavily upon many authors and reviewers and
upon the writings of the artist himself. A small number of
plates of Shahn's work are included for the reader's interest,
but no attempt has been made to show reproductions of all
works mentioned in the study since none are discussed
thoroughly and I have felt their inclusion would be of
questionable and limited value. It is hoped that this study
will prove helpful to those who wish further knowledge con—

cerning the work of Ben Shahn.

BEN SHAHN:
HIS PHILOSOPHY, STYLE AND DEVELOPMENT

BY

Jeanette Budicin Eskedal

A THESIS
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
Department of Art

1967

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List Of Plates 0 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 0 iii

A. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . l
B. Artist's Personal Background and History . . . . . 2
C. Artist's Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

D. Artist's Media and Method of Working . . . . . . . 17
E. Characteristics of the Artist's Style . . z . . . 21
F. Influences Upon the Artist's Style . . . . . . . . 38
G. Development of the Artist's Style . . . . . . . . 48
H. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Bibliography . . . .‘. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6l

Plates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

ii

LIST OF PLATES

I. "Scott's Run, West Virginia" . . . . . . . . . .
II. "Sunday Football" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
III. "Vacant Lot" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
IV. "Peter and the Wolf" . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
V. "Alternatives" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
VI. "Koboyama" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

66

67

68

69

7O

71

(Note: all plates reproduced in this paper are taken from

James Thrall Soby's book, Ben Shahn: Paintings to which
I am gratefully indebted. Other paintings mentioned in.
this paper but not reproduced may be found in same above
mentioned monograph.)

 

iii

Introduction

 

Ben Shahn is probably one of the most unusual and sig-
nificant of contemporary American artists, In a half—
century dominated by abstractionists and non-objectivists
Shahn has doggedly pursued a realistic style in which sub-
ject matter and content are all-important. He insists upon
communicating with his contemporaries and upon dealing with
themes which pare away the frivolous and lay bare the core
of man's being——his thoughts, struggles, and hopes. Such
seriousness of purpose has won Shahn a following throughout
the world and most major museums and galleries contain ex-
amples of his work. A body of written material about the
artist is available in divergent bulletins, magazines, and
books, but Shahn, himself, writes articulately and has pub-
lished a large number of books and articles in which he ex-
pounds his philosophy of art. Yet, for all the available
verbiage concerning the artist, few sources contain a very
thorough analysis of the complete body of the artist's work,
of his style as a whole, of his development throughout his
career, of the influences upon him, and of his personal
philosophy of art. This study is presented in an attempt
to fill the present void and to bring together literature
and information in the field into one place for analysis, as

well as to shed new light upon the work of the artist.

Furthermore, as Shahn approaches his seventieth birthday it
seems fair to assume that the major bulk of his work has been
completed, and, thus, the time is ripe for a thorough look

at the development of his life's work.

Artist's Personal Background and History

 

Before a more careful analysis can be made, a brief
summary of the artist's life, background, and work seems
necessary. Ben Shahn, born in Kovno, Lithuania, in 1898,
migrated to America, and more specifically to Brooklyn, with
his Jewish family in 1906. While his Russian early child-
hood brings Shahn vivid, colorful memories, it was his
rugged New York City upbringing and surroundings which
molded the artist and still provides him with much of his
subject matter. Shahn became a lithographer's apprentice
at the age of fourteen and learned the trade by which he
was to support himself until he was thirty-two and which
was to have great influence upon his style as an artist,
particularly upon his drawing. The artist's formal training
was at New York University, the City College of New York,and
the National Academy of Design, but he probably learned far
more about painting on his two trips to Europe in 1925 and
1927. Shahn absorbed and observed a great deal of European
culture during his lengthy stays there and came under the

influence of past artists such as Giotto and Piero della

Francesco and present ones like Rouault and Dufy. It was

a tine of formulating, digesting, and seeking his own identity
for the artist. Upon his return to the United States Shahn
was painting in a style greatly influenced by European art,
and while his first one-man show held at the Downtown Gallery
in 1929 was successful with resulting sales, he was not
completely satisfied with his work and did not feel that he
had yet made his painting style "his own".

Some experimental watercolors on the subject of the
Dreyfus case motivated Shahn in 1932 to attempt a series of
twenty—three gouaches on the widely-discussed Sacco—Vanzetti
case. The series was an immediate success and marked the
beginning of Shahn's mature style as an artist. It is in
this series of paintings that we first see the profound con—
cern for social conditions, the emotion, and the striking
motive and message which were to mark Shahn's work throughout
his career. In a similar vein, the artist's next work con—
sisted of a series of paintings on the subject of the case
of the labor leader Tom Mooney.

During the early thirties Ben Shahn was commissioned
to work on projects for several ill-fated murals. Diego
Rivera, who had liked the Sacco-Vanzetti series, employed
him as an assistant on the fresco, "Man at the Crossroads",

for the RCA Building in Rockefeller Center, New York, but

the mural was destroyed upon completion due to public dis—
pleasure. Shahn's paintings on Prohibition for the Public
Works of Art Project were never executed into murals but
remain in the form of easel paintings. The sketches which

he submitted with Lou Block for the corridor of the Riker's
Island Penitentiary in New York were accepted by Mayor La
Guardia and the Commissioner of Correction but were rejected
by the Municipal Art Commission on the grounds of psychological
unfitness.l These murals, contrasting old and new penal
methods, would have been a welcome change from the usual
painting of the period in federal buildings, but, fortunately,
Shahn was to have his chance at mural paintings in the years
immediately following.

In the middle thirties, Shahn was employed by the Farm
Security Administration as artist, designer, and photographer.
The photographs which he took during this period and his
memories of the country through which he traveled and of
the people he met have provided and still furnish Shahn with
a rich storehouse of images from which to build paintings
and details of paintings.

Shahn's first completed mural was done for the Farm

 

1Philippa Whiting, "Speaking about Art," American
Magazine of Art, ’XXVIII, (August 1935), 493.

Security Administration for the community center of a
federal housing development for garment workers at Roosevelt,
New Jersey, the community where he has resided ever since.
Following this, the artist and his wife, Bernarda Bryson,
were commissioned to do thirteen panels in the main lobby

of the Bronx Central Annex Post Office, New York. The
subject the artists chose was of workers across America
performing their specific tasks under the Whitman quotation,

1 Shahn's final and best

"Democracy rests finally upon us."
prewar mural entitled "The Meaning of Social Security", the
commission for which he won out of a field of 375 artists,
was executed in the main corridor of the Federal Security
Building, Washington D.C. The paintings represent the
finest of American mural painting of the thirties with their
direct and uncluttered style, and they were praised for
their variety in texture and mood and for their good, yet
sombre color.2
During the war, Shahn designed posters for the Office
of War Information which have served equally well as easel

paintings. Shahn also designed posters following the war

for the C.I.O. and in 1948 for Henry Wallace's Third Party

 

1Oliver W. Larkin, Art and Life in America, (New York:
Rinehart and Company, Inc., 1956), 438.

2"Shahn Best of 375," Art Digest. XV: (November 15'
1940), 8.

 

Movement. Shahn's poster style is direct and forceful as,
indeed, is all of his work, whether commercial art or fine
art.

From World War II until the present, Ben Shahn has
taken many commercial commissions for such concerns as the
Columbia Broadcasting Company, the Container Corporation of
America, and.ggm§, and he has done illustrations for books
both by others and by himself. Throughout this body of
work there persists a high degree of workmanship and dedi-
cation which makes the works equally at home as "fine art"
drawings and paintings or within their original more com-
mercial art settings, and many have easily crossed the line
to find their way into private and public collections.

Throughout his career, no matter what may occupy the
main bulk of Shahn's time, the artist has found time to do
easel paintings. Some of these have been part of series
dealing with social and political themes which moved the
artist greatly, but others are more individual and personal.
During the years from 1939 to 1941, Shahn painted a group
of canvases which he called "Sunday paintings", not only
because many of them were painted on the day mentioned but
also because they embody a more relaxed, lyrical, and per-
sonal outlook on the American scene. They show his im-

pressions of the country and people gathered while

photographing for the F.S.A., and they show workers, children,
and poor, simple people relaxing, enjoying a moment of
leisure.

In a much more somber vein, Shahn's next group of
paintingsdealt with the loneliness and isolation and destruc-
tion following in the wake of World War II. It is the after-
math of war rather than the actual fighting itself which
moved the artist. Other themes which have inspired Shahn
include the Centralia mine disaster, Scott's Run defendants,
and a tenement fire in which all of the children of the negro,
Hickmann, died. Shahn's most recent series, began in 1960,
is entitled "The Saga of the Lucky Dragon" and was inspired
by the incident in which a Japanese fishing boat accidentally
wandered into an area of radioactive fallout during an Amer-
ican atomic bomb test in the Pacific. The result was the
illness but eventual recovery of members of the crew with
the exception of one who died of unknown causes. Shahn used
the particular of this incident to express the more universal
tragedy of atomic warfare and "the unspeakable tragedy to—
ward which the world's people are moving",1

In addition to his paintings, Ben Shahn is well—known

for his drawings and graphic works. He has also done sets

 

lJean Lipman, What is American in American Art, (New
York: McGraw Hill Book Company, Inc., 1963), 95.

 

for plays and ballets and wall mosaics for Jewish congre—
gations and for Grady High School in Brooklyn. Shahn was
selected one of Ten Best Painters by ngk_magazine in 1948,
and in 1954 he was chosen, with Willem de Kooning, to re-
present American art at the Venice Biennale where he re-
ceived one of the show's top three prizes. Shahn's fame

as an artist has won him summer teaching posts at the Boston
Museum School and the University of Colorado, and, in 1956,
led to his being named as Charles Eliot Norton Professor
of Poetry at Harvard University, the lectures from which he
has published in book form under the title, The Shape of
Content.

In general, then, Ben Shahn is an artist of renown and
great proficiency in many different areas of art. He is
well-known and widely-admired both through his art works
and his written material. Throughout his career Shahn has
been uncompromising and a strong defendant of his own beliefs
and philosophy of art. In interviews and in his own writings
Shahn is extremely articulate and sets forth his philosophy
in a scholarly and convincing manner. Thus, we turn to the
artist, himself, to discover the beliefs which motivate his
painting.

Artist's Philosophy

Shahn's work is serious in intent and digs below the

surface to the important issues in man's existence.

At some point very early in my life I became
absorbed--not in Man's Fate, but rather in Man's
State. The question of suffering is an eternal
mystery wearing many masks and disguises as well
as its true face, but its reality impinges upon
us everywhere...Whatever my basic promptings and
urges may be, I am aware that the concern, the
compassion for suffering—-feeling it, formulating
it--has been the constant intention of my work
since I first picked up a paintbrush.

Shahn is a compassionate artist, dealing with human emotions
and man's eternal state of suffering. The artist does not
see life as an easy, carefree existence, but one in which
a good deal of Sadness comes.
All the wheels of business and advertising
are turning night and day to prove the colossal
falsehood that America is smiling. And they
want me to add my two per cent—-Hell, no!2
Shahn has not been an artist to follow the popular trends.of
his day, but, instead, he paints according to his deep inner
convictions about art and life. Shahn is a fair and honest
person and hates Unfairness and injustice.
I hate injustice. I guess that's about the
only thing I really do hate. I've hated injustice
ever since I read a story in school, and I hope

I go on hating it all my life.

Thus, the most persistent and important themes which run

 

lLipman, 95.

2"Baffling Ben," Time, LVIII (November 5, 1951), 82.

3John D. Morse, "Ben Shahn: An Interview," XXXVII
(April, 1944), 136.

10

through Shahn's work from the Sacco-Vanzetti series to the
"Saga of the Lucky Dragon" are compassion for human suffering
and hatred of injustice no matter where it is found. With
such strong feelings dominating the artist's philosophy it

is not surprising to find a good body of his work devoted

to social and political reform, as well as to sympathy for
the common worker or laborer.

Shahn is a humanist and believes in the worth and
dignity of man and his culture. Art has no significance
for him except as it deals with humanity.

I find that my own array of values-—at

least the conscious ones--rotate around the

central concept of man as the source of all

value. Thus whatever institutions and activ-

ities have the avowed purpose of broadening his

experience and his self-awareness are par-

ticularly dear to me.

The artist feels art cannot free itself of its human origin,
and therefore, must deal with human emotions and values. If
it does not speak to man, its creator, it has no right to
exist.

I think any artist...will agree that art

is the creation of human values. It may have

cosmic extension...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

 

 

1Ben Shahn, "How an Artist Looks at Aesthetics," The

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, XIII (September,
1954), 50.

11

never cast off its human origin.1
The humanity which concerns Shahn is not a generalized,
all-encompassing one, but a humanity composed of individuals
with unique characteristics and feelings. The things
which make one person different from another are of supreme
importance and interest to Shahn.

Generalities and abstractions and vital statis-

tics had always bored me. Whether in people or

in art it was the individual peculiarities that

were interesting. One has sympathy with a hurt

person, not because he is a generality, but pre-

cisely because he is not. Only the individual

can imagine, invent, or create. The whole au-

dience of art is an audience of individuals. Each

of them comes to the painting or sculpture because

there he can be told that he, the individual, tran-

scends all classes and flouts all predictions, In

the work of art he finds his uniqueness affirmed.
Thus, Ben Shahn, the individual, desires to communicate
through his art to each individual viewer. This is not to
say that the artist is not concerned with universal truths
for, indeed, he deals with many topics of wider significance,
but that he does not forget the uniqueness and peculiar

qualities of each person. Shahn uses the universal to

illuminate the particular, as well as the particular to

 

l"Ben Shahn,9 Magazine of Art, XLII (November, 1949), 266.

2Barry Ulanov, The Two WOrlds of American Art, The
Private and the Popular, (New York: The MacMillan Company,
1965), 87.

12

give significance to the universal.

The foundation of Ben Shahn's philosophy of art is
that art must communicate to the viewer; that it must have
a message. This message he calls "content", and he feels
that it is not possible to have art without content, or
there is no purpose in art at all. Shahn works on the
assumption that most people "are interested in the hopes,
fears, dreams and tragedies of other people, for these are
the things that life is made of."1 He further states that
"there is no moral reason why art ought to go on if it has
nothing further to express."2

Demanding communication as he does, Ben Shahn requires,
first of all, that his works communicate to him. If they do
this, he feels certain that they will also speak to others.3
Apparently, he feels that he shares the same basic emotions
with the rest of humanity, and what moves him will also move
them. Shahn is conscious of composition, line, shapes,
color, and all the other elements which the artist uses to

create a composition which is pleasing in "form", but he

says form alone is not enough. Form provides the tools by

 

Selden Rodman, Conversations with Artists, (New York:
The Devin-Adair Company, 1957), 192.

2George Biddle, The Yes and No of Contemporary Art,
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957), 175.

3Rodman, 191.

 

13

which the artist is able to communicate, but content is
still the important thing in art. Form is "only the shape
taken by content", says Shahn, and "there is absolutely no
such thing as form without content. Form always has con-
tent of some kind, even though it may be only colored pig—
ment."l

What then does Ben Shahn think of the current trend in
non-objective art?

But non-objective art denies all values and

content except the machinery with which it is put

together. I have heard it claimed that non-objective

art is pure emotion. Well, that is pure mystique.

Emotion is not abstract. It always has content.
Clearly, then, Shahn refuses to accept any "art" which does
not have content, which does not Speak to its viewer. The
artist, however, does not reject the discoveries in com-
position and color--or "form" as he would call it-- of the
abstract and non—objective artists, for his own work has been
greatly influenced by them, but he simply means that they
do not go far enough--that they have elevated what should
have been merely a tool to the whole purpose of art.

In the case of non-objective art, I feel

that the only experience the picture can give is
the perception of disassociated form. Any allusive

 

l"Ben Shahn", Magazine of Art, 266.

 

2"A Symposium on How to Combine Architecture, Painting,
and Sculpture," Interiors, CX (May, 1951), 102.

 

14

quality the work may have is purely in the eye of
the beholder. The impact of shapes and colors
and lines, their interplay, their organization on
a canvas are the sum total of the picture. These
qualities are indeed the indispensable equipment
of the artist; without mastery of them, he cannot
create effectively. They are as basic as skilful
handling of prosody is to the poet. But they are
not the stuff of man's ultimate values. To make
them the object of painting seems to me to ques-
tion the worth of art itself.1

Thus, we return to the artist's conviction that art must
deal with "man's ultimate values". "It is the mission of
art to remind man from time to time that he is human,"2
says Shahn, and his work certainly reminds man of his hu—
manity. Art, to Shahn, cannot be separated from life, and
it is not art, but life, which is Shahn"s primary interest.
He is interested in art as a way of arriving at the truth
about life and only "in so far as it enables me to express
what I feel about life."3
The artist, if he is to have significance, cannot paint
in a vacuum, in his own secluded "ivory tower" studio away

from the people and issues of his time. Thus, Ben Shahn

makes trips from his Roosevelt, New Jersey home into New York

 

luBen Shahn," Magazine Of Art, 269-

2Masters of.lodern Art, ed. Alfred H. Barr (New York:
The Museum of Modern Art, 1958), 162.

3Selden Rodman, Portrait of the Artist as an American

(New York: Harper and Brothers, Publishers, 1951), 32.

15

City or across the country or to Europe in order to keep
abreast with the life and happenings of his age. Shahn

feels that the artist cannot afford to be uninvolved in

the great issues of his time; that he must do Something to

help

alleviate the evils around him. He feels that the artist

should have "social significance" in his painting to be great

today, and that the "significance of his work depends upon

whether it expands the scope and perceptions of the people

who behold it."1

Therefore, it appears that Shahn believes art should

not only communicate but also uplift and educate.

Thus,

The artist must operate on the assumption
that the public consists in the highest order of
individual, that he is civilized, cultured, and
highly sensitive both to emotional and intellec-
tual contexts. And while the whole public most
certainly does not consist in that sort of in-
dividual, still the tendency of art is to create
such a public——to lift the level of perceptivity,
to increase and enrich the average individual's
store of values.2

the artist becomes a molder of values and tastes

within his public and bears a responsibility to do his task

well.

Shahn feels that there is no subject which is unworthy

 

lRodman, Portrait of the Artist..., 28.

2Shahn,"How an Artist Looks...", 51.

16

for the artist to undertake as long as his goals and
objectives are clear, and he does not forget his task of
communicating with and educating his public. The artist's
task, clearly, is not a light—hearted, carefree whim of
fancy, but a serious and important job. Shahn feels that
the artist chooses a subject to paint because "you like it
a lot, or else because you hate it."1 A subject about which
the artist is neutral apparently is not good material upon
which to build a painting.

Ben Shahn rejects artists who capitalize upon the public's
desire for entertainment and mass-produce works for their
box office appeal. His concept of creativity is "that of
the ego which knows in its creative process no limits except
those imposed by the medium."2 Therefore, creativity can
be applied equally as effectively to commercial art as to
fine art, and to Shahn there is no difference for both should
be approached with the same interest and standards. "There
is no line of demarcation where the one ends and the other

3

begins," is his philosophy, and his works bear this out,

 

lAlexander Eliot, Three Hundred Years of American
Painting (New York: Time Incorporated, 1957), 239.

2"Ben Shahn." Magazine of Art. 269-

 

3Leo Lionniq "Ben Shahn," Graphis, II (November, 1962),
472. ’

17

easily serving dual purposes in both fine and commerCial art.
Thus, Ben Shahn's philosophy encompasses all of his art,
and his works are related to each other by a sameness of
spirit and purpose. The artist's philosophy of art and of
life are the same; his personality is integrated with his
work; and there is no disparity between his beliefs and his
actions.
Artist's Media and Method of Working
Ben Shahn's painting style is distinctive and personal
and is firmly based upon and dependent on drawing. Shahn
reportedly spends two hours a day drawing in his studio "to

1 and drawings are

learn to draw always better and better",
as important to the artist as larger, finished paintings
because they are "still dictated by the same broad exper-
ience or personal understanding which molds the larger work."2
Understandably, then, Shahn makes a large number of pre—
liminary sketches and drawings before he ever picks up a
brush to begin a painting, and many of these drawings are

sent to his dealer, The Downtown Gallery, for sale along

with the finished painting. The artist does a number of

 

1Ben Shahn, Love and Joy About Letters (New York: Gross-
man Publishers, 1963), ll.

 

2Ben Shahn, The Biography of a Painting (Cambridge, Mass.:
Fogg Museum, Harvard University, 1956), 9.

 

l8

sketches for each figure he plans to use in the final com-
position, "abstracting each one from the preceding one."1
After he is reasonably satisfied with each figure alone, he
begins to do sketches in which he works on the relationship
of each figure to the others, and, finally he does drawings
in which he concentrates on the balance and relationships

of the composition as a whole. Here he begins to consider
details and objects surrounding the figures and the relation
of the figures to the background. Shahn usually does one
completed, formal drawing in which the composition is final—
ized and is in the form which he expects to use in the com-
pleted painting. Being a creative and sensitive artist,
Shahn, of course, may make additional changes in the com-
position as he progresses on the painting, for he also has
the relationships of color, value, and texture to consider
as he works. As the work progresses on the sketches and
painting, Shahn often turns them upside down "to check
abstractly the validity of color and composition...It shows
up the differences between just an illustration and a well—
"2

designed picture.

Drawing and painting for Ben Shahn are not relaxing, for

 

1John D. Morse, "Ben Shahn: An Interview," Magazine of
Art , XXXVII (April, 1944), 138.

 

2Morse, "Ben Shahn: An Interview," 138.

19

he is constantly struggling, not only with the relationships
of color and composition, but also with the emotions and
message which are always present in his work and give it its
distinctive character. Shan speaks of this creative process
as agony until he finally finds a "hook" upon which the
whole picture seems to hang; then, the whole piece seems to
come together and make sense; and the following work is less
tumultuous and more harmonious for the artist.1
When I am working...I work in a fever. It

is agony for everyone, including myself. The

criteria are inevitable, I want to get the emo-

tional empact. The esthetics are but tools to

express the human draman The work goes on for

from three weeks to two months, but I try to

make the painting look as if it were done in

two days. When I get to a point where added

work would not fulfill the original concept,

but weaken it, there I stop--even if not fin-

ished; I feel I can no longer go on.
When the work nears completion, Shahn will lie back on the
couch in his studio and study it for hours deciding on the
last delicate refinements and alterations to be made, and
after the painting is finished it will be kept around his

house or studio for a number of days, as if he wishes to

absorb and digest it before it is sent off to his dealer in

 

1Thomas B. Hess, "Ben Shahn Paints a Picture," Art
News, IIL (May, 1949), 55.

2Ralph M. Pearson, The Modern Renaissance in American
Art (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1954), 122.

20

New York.

Ben Shahn does not like to be watched when working, per—
haps because painting is such a personal experience for him.
He uses both hands interchangeably when painting, but he
draws with his right hand only, because "drawing is closer
to writing."1 He uses tempera exclusively in his work be—
cause he says he likes "painting that is tight and clear
and under control,"2 and he feels that oil paint makes it
to easy for an artist to cover over his mistakes. Shahn
mixes his own tempera and adds different amounts of water
at will depending upon the painting effects he desires.

His paint consists of pigment added to a mixture of gum,
honey, and glycerin with carbolic acid added as a preser—
vative. He keeps the paint in samll jars by his desk,
always ready for immediate use, and he is able to achieve
a wide range of textures by adding egg white and varying
the qualityci water.3

Shahn, too impatient to wait for oil paint to dry, is
able to work rapidly with his chosen medium and to arrive

at the flat areas of color which are so typical of his work.

 

1Rodman, Portrait of the Artist..., 81.

2Morse, "Ben Shahn: An Interview," 136.

3Hess, "Ben Shahn Paints...," 55.

21

His ground is a board, covered with paper or muslin and
coated with gesso.l His drawing is transferred to the gesso
surface, the colors are roughly blocked in in tempera, and
the painting is begun. Ben Shahn has arrived at the com-
bination of media and materials which best suits his tem-
perament and style.
Characteristics of the Artist's Style

Beside Ben Shahn's lifelong concern with injustice and
his compassion for suffering, there have been certain themes
or subjects which have been of special interest to him. His
primary concern has always been mankind, the average person,
or more specifically, the common laborer. ‘With Shahn's pro-
found respect for human life, few of his paintings are com-
pletely void of human form, and even those small number in
which no figure appears are quite mindful of their human
context. The faces of men are important for here it is that
we read their emotions, and Ben Shahn frequently enlarges
the heads of his figures in order to increase the emotional
impact. His figures' facial expressions set the mood for
his paintings, and the eyes frequently are the most ex-
pressuve feature of his highly expressive faces.

Hands are also very important in Shahn's work. His

 

lHess, "Ben Shahn Paints...," 55.

22

interest in their expressive qualities goes as far back as
1931 where we find hands playing an important part in il—
lustrations he did for the Haggadah, as well as in the Sacco—
Vanzetti series of the following year. Throughout the body
of his work we find that he has exaggerated the hands of his
figures in order to obtain an emotional impact. The artist
tells of his interest in hands and the way in which he prac-
ticed them.
I became fascinated with the expressiveness

of hands in their many different positions, and how

representative they are of people. I tend to judge

people by their hands. Quite early I realized that

a lot of artists shy away from drawing hands--putting

them behind the back of a figure and other such ways

of sliding out of doing them. And I was determined

to learn how to draw hands in every position.
The hands which Ben Shahn draws are not the smooth, delicate,
pampered hands of the rich, but the strong calloused, soiled
hands of the worker. They are hands which have been enlarged
and strengthened by manual labor. His hands, indeed, tell
us a great deal about the people he paints.

Another love of Shahn's has been music, musicians and
musical instruments. These subjects began to appear in his

work just prior to World War II and have provided a lyrical

element ever since. Shahn's musicians are not members of

 

lBetty Chamberlain, "Ben Shahn," Art News, XXXXVI
(October, 1947), 55.

23

concert orchestras and his instruments are not of the caliber
made by Stradivarius, but, instead, they again are common
people playing instruments with nicks and dents and probably
off key, this time caught in a moment of relaxation spent
in music. As might be expected of Shahn, his musicians are
not sitting back having a carefree time of it, but even in
the production of music, they are working and struggling to
produce their few notes or chords. Their brows are furrowed,
as in "The Violin Player"; they grip firmly onto their in-
struments; and their eyes stare off into space in deep con-
centration.
Song, I observe, does not issue from an un-

troubled face; quite the contrary, the beautiful

sounds, the subtleties and delicacies, the minors,

the accidentals, all require an intense concen-

tration on the part of the singer. That concen-

tration produces a facial expression nearing

agony.1
Thus, Shahn, the artist who deals with man's struggles, sees
even in the seemingly untroubled element of music a good deal
of effort and agony.

From the time he was a lithographer's apprentice until
the present day, Ben Shahn has had a fascination for alpha-

bets, letters, and type. Many of his paintings contain signs

and/or lettering, and in the last ten years he has done hand

 

lShahn, "How an Artist Looks...," 48.

24

lettering for the texts of several books which he has
illustrated. In the lithographer's workshop Shahn became
greatly interested in the different varieties of type

which were available to express different moods and feelings.
In the different styles of alphabets he appreciated the
"wonderful interrelationships, the rhythm of line as letter
moves into letter."l He liked letters not only for the
things they were able to spell out, but also for their

own inherent beauty and feeling. When travleing for the

Farm Security Administration, be became intrigued by the
hand—lettered signs done by amateurs which were "a folk

art of great quality, and one that was extremely amusing

as well";2 he took many photos of these signs; and he in-
corporated many of these signs into paintings "as an integral
part of the work, not as something separate."3 Shahn

loves the letters themselves as if they were friends, and

to him they are exactly that. Each has its own peculiarities

and personality.

 

lShahn, Love and Joy About Letters, 13.

2Shahn, Love and Joy About Letters, 15.

3Shahn, Love and Joy About Letters, 17.

 

25

I began to use letters now, not as local

color and not as subordinate parts of paintings,

but for their own sake, for their beauty, their

own meaning. Words and letters may amplify and

enrich the meaning of painting. They are at the

same time independent and integral to the painting,

and a contrapuntal element. They lend force and

structure to the work, but they must be fully
developed; they must, I think, be knowledgeable

in themselves. A badly done letter is a pitiful

thing in a painting and degrades itas a fully

understood letter may enhance it and complement

it.1
So it is that lettering plays an important role in the art
of Ben Shahn. The love of letters has become such an in-
tegral part of his artistic style that even his drawings
remind us of some sort of mystic heiroglyphic: a sort of
secret writing which only the informed can decipher.

There are many general qualities and peculiarities of
the art style of Ben Shahn which can be seen throughout the
body of his work and which may be considered distinguishing
characteristics of his style. As might be expected of a
former photographer, Shahn has an interest in details which
is refined and minute. This almost photographic attention
to details enables the artist to depict the little things
which make one person different form another and to provide

the props and background most suitable to each character

portrayed. Ben Shahn keeps a large file of photographs in

 

lShahn, Love and Joy_About Letters, 17.

 

26

his studio because "photographs give those details of forms
that you thing you'll remember but don't."1 He refers to
these photos often, and many times one or two of them will
form the basis for a painting. His method of working is to
balance large areas of broad, over-all impact with areas of
fine detail for added interest.
After I've got the relationship of forms

working, then I go back to details. They've got

to be right too. There's a difference in the way

a twelve dollar coat wrinkles from the way a

seventy-five dollar coat wrinkles.
For all his interest in realism, Shahn does not function
merely as a human camera, mechanically recording what he
sees. Rather, all forms presented carry his own peculiar
emotional flavor, for Shahn is not an artist who merely ob-
serves-—he comments. Neither is Shahn's interest in details
a slavish one in which each minute item is carried out in
its fullest detail, but, rather, Shahn chooses the details
which enhance, in the best way possible, the emotional im-
pact of the painting.

Don't try to paint every detail to achieve

realism. One such detail carefully carried out
will serve the imagination for all the rest.3

 

lMorse, "Ben Shahn: An Interview," 139.

2 .
Morse, "Ben Shahn: An Interv1ew," 138.

3Rodman, Portrait of the Artist..., 74.

27

Sometimes details are added to form a contrast to other de-
tails in the picture. When details are used, Shahn paints
them convincingly, sometimes resorting to the use of a
magnifying glass to insure that they are properly rendered.

Among the most telling of the details used by the artist
are those found in the architectural backgrounds which he
sets behind figures. He uses architecture and architectural
ornamentation in full detail to tell the viewer something
about the people who live in these buildings, because he says,
"whatever they have for decoration on their hOuses is very
revealing about them."1 Thus, architectural backgrounds are
vital markers in the story the artist tells. Details are
important in a Shahn painting and should be studied care-
fully; they are the keys to the character and emotional
tempo of the people depiCted, and as such, play an important
role in the art sty1e of Ben Shahn.

Shahn's paintings frequently have an overpowering sense
of loneliness and isolation. Single figures appear in front
of flat backgrounds like actors in front of stage sets, as
in "Vacant Lot". (Plate III) When groups of figures appear
in one composition, they often seem isolated from each other
almost as if each existed in his own vacuum, unaware of the

others' existence. Even when figures seem to relate to each

 

lChamberlain, "Ben Shahn," 55.

28

other, there appears to be an isolating body of air between
them which seems to block conversation and allows communi-
cation only through expressions, gestures, and music. Among
the most united in feeling of Shahn's groups of figures are
his lovers and brothers, both drawn together by strong
emotional ties, and his musicians, brought into a unity of
feeling by the common bond of music. But for the greater
part of Shahn's figures, the world is a lonely, almost
threatening, place which must be faced alone; each man has
his own problems and struggles and each must make his own
independent decisions.

Shahn paints with boldness and directness, and his
works read like posters or murals. His forms are generally
flat and he makes little use of three—dimensional modeling.
Sometimes perspective is used, but his color and textured
painting technique tend to flatten the areas in which per-
spective would lead the eye into the distance. The viewer
nearly always feels that he can reach out and touch the
farthest most point in the background with little effort if
he were to extend his arm into the space of the picture
plane. This flatness of painting technique used by Shahn
enables the viewer to concentrate more completely one the

main subject of the painting-~the emotional context or

29

message--rather than distracting him with sweeping vistas
into the far distance.

Ben Shahn is an artist of contrasts and opposites. He
likes to play one element in a painting against another
which is completely different. This play back and forth
points up the peculiarities which make people human and
different from each other. Shahn contrasts the large and
small, the light and dark, the crude and the finished, the
smiling and the sad, and he likes to mix two-dimensional and
three-dimensional elements in the same picture. If given
the opportunity he will "have three vanishing points in one
plane, or a half—dozen in three planes."l This use of diver—
gent, conflicting elements gives Shahn's work a varied quality
which keeps the viewer's attention and often makes him smile.
This play back and forth keeps a balance in his compositions
which make them work together as pleasing and complete units.

One form of contrast which Shahn frequently employs,
like Shakespeare, is the use of comic relief in serious
situations. Shahn's social comment is serious, but it is
never bitter. He does not point an accusing finger and con-
demn the objects of his satire to destruction, but, instead,

his mood is wry and sardonic.

 

lMorse, "Ben Shahn: An Interview," 138.

30

My type of social painting makes people

smile. The height of the reaction is when the

emotions of anger, sympahty, and humor all work

at the same time. That's what I try to do--

play one against the other, trying to keep a

balance.
Indeed, Ben Shahn's works are not as devoid of humor and
joy as some critics would like us to believe, but various
emotions are present and each has its place in working out
the balance of the whole body of feeling. A description of
his work which Shahn likes and which shows this strange
combination of feelings in his works is "hardboiled and
. u 2
beautiful .

Shahn is most frequently classified with those artists
who paint in the style of Social Realsim. As an artist who
dislikes labels because they make things too simple and are
often misleading, Shahn cannot be expected to enjoy being
classified as a social realist, and he does not. However,
perhaps a closer look at the style will reveal some impor-
tant areas of affinity with the work of Shahn. Social
Realsim has been defined as follows.

...a movement of particular force during

the 1930's...a form of expressionism in which
emphasis was placed upon the relationship of

 

1Morse, "Ben Shahn: An Interview," 138.

2James Thrall Soby, Contemporary Painters, (New York:
The Museum of Modern Art, 1948), 49.

31

man to man, which revealed oppression, injustice,

and strife, and which dealt with such themes as

war, labor, and political corruption...was stimu-

lated by the Depression at home and political and

social events abroad.l
Ben Shahn has been described by the same author as "the most
consistent investigator of this approach and concern in
painting."2 Certainly the previous definition applies very
clearly to Shahn's work, which specifically deals with the
relationships of men to each other and with "oppression,
injustice, and strife? Also, the themes of "war, labor, and
political corruption" have been ones of particular interest
to Ben Shahn since the time of the Sacco—Vanzetti series.

Shahn's political leanings, particularly in the thir-
ties when he had some connections with Communist-dominated
organizations? have appeared to be to the left, another of the

characteristics given as typical of social realists.4 Shahn

seems to follow the philosophy of his teacher, Diego Rivera,

 

lWilliam H. Gerdts, Jr., Painting_and Sculpture in New
Jersey (The New Jersey Historical Series: Princeton, New
Jersey: D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., 1964), XXI, 237.

2Gerdts, Paintingyand Sculpture..., 237.

3Rodman, Portrait of the Artist..., 99.

Peter and Linds Murray, A Dictionary of Art and Artists
(Baltimore, Md.: Penguin Books, 1959), 301.

32

that "art should be propaganda",1 and Yet his form of pro—
paganda is tempered and softened by his esthetics. Shahn's
political leanings seem more difficult to determine in the
forties, and critics cannot seem to decide whether his gen-
eral direction was left or right.2 Rather than to assign
the artist to a particular political camp, it seems more
likely that Shahn has avoided whole-hearted espousal of any
specific political party or group, but, instead, he has
acted throughout his life upon specific and personal social
convictions--feeling consistently called upon to speak out
against injustice, no matter where it was found, regardless
of political connections.

Thus, Ben Shahn seems frequently to choose topics for
paintings which would classify him as a social realist.
While the artist's choice of subject matter seems conclusively
to place him within this school, his painting technique varies
a great deal from that of the main bulk of social realists.
Shahn is perhaps the most sophisticated of the lot. His com—
positions are harmoniously related; he is less obvious, al-
lowing subtleties to carry his message; and he has not been

limited to provincial concerns of only regional interest.

 

l
I. J. Belmont, "Exhibitions in New York," Art News,

xxx: (May 13, 1933), 5.

2Rodman, Portrait of the Artist..., 37.

 

33

Shahn seems to have had the widest vision, the greatest
variety of technique and subject, and the most far-reaching
influence. Shahn, always an American in outlook and con-
text, seems to go beyond the other social realists of his
country to have importance on the international scene.
Shahn's American character is that of the

contemporary international man whose examination

of his own country and his own time must take into

consideration the character of the world of which

his country is inevitably a part, the man whose

patriotism is not blind faith, but a matter of

the individual's obligation to see clearly, to

fight injustice and corruption and stupidity

wherever they infect national life.1
Shahn chooses subjects which can have bearing upon people
anywhere, and he goes beyond the limitations of Social
Realism as a school and speaks to humanity as a whole.

In choosing a specific event to paint, Shahn must feel
that the emotions and circumstances involved will have a
significance and meaning beyond the particular time and
place.

...it became imperative that the whole affair
be crystallized, made emotional and perhaps beau—
tiful in its way, so that it would become a part

of the general imggination, become immediate; sym—
bolic, and clear.

 

1John Canaday, Mainstreams of Modern Art (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1959), 519.

2Lipman, What is American..., 95.

 

34

Symbolism and allegory have played an ever-increasing and
more important role in the painting of Ben Shahn. Since
World War II the artist has become more and more "interested
in symbols as such, to sense the latent power of the great
archetypal images that are probably only half—recognized
consciously, but are recognized instinctively."l An example
of this tendency in his work may be seen in the painting,
"Allegory“, in which the particulars of the Hickmann fire
inspired the universal of the symbolic fire-beast who goes
beyond the threat and horror of fire itself to a more de-
vastating and ominous force threatening to destroy all of
mankind.

Shahn's use of color has an unusual, chalky character
to it which makes it distinctively his own. Colors relate
to each other well, and each seems to contain some of all
the other colors used in the composition. In many pictures
the colors become pastel—like through the addition of white,
and are very close in value, with dark lines offering the
only contrast. Shahn makes use of the contrasting effects
of complements and primaries, but they are, again, often
toned with white or gray. His faces and skin tones are fre-

quently very chalky and death—like, being painted most often

 

lLipman, What is American..., 95.

 

35

in a bluish, grayish, or pinkish—white, and they certainly
deny the "flesh and blood" quality of the skin of most live
people. When Shahn's faces are more colorful, they still
are not in the tone which would commonly be considered a
"flesh tone", but, instead, he paints them a rather deep and
brilliant orange. Clearly, then, the artist wishes to avoid
flesh tones and substitutes colors for faces which are less
familiar. This is done for the sake of emotional impact and
helps to carry along the message of his paintings.

Shahn makes frequent use of deep and luminous reds and
blues which are bright and clear and "read" well. Few
paintings exist by the artist in which both of these colors
are absent, and they are frequently emphasized by the addition
of black accents in the composition. Ben Shahn's use of
color is often arbitrary, being completely unrelated to the
colors of objects in nature, as in his "NOcturne" in which
bright orange faces, park bench railings, and tree branches
dominate the painting. Shahn is not bound by nature, but
uses colors freely to enchance the emotional impact of the
picture, and his color is often as arbitrary as that of the
Fauves or the German Expressionists.

Shahn's use of color is flat and poster-like and his

forms appear almost as if cut from paper, yet he is able to

36

achieve subtle color modulations within the firmly defined
areas of his forms. His color is applied in a thin manner,
with no actual texture built up, but through uneven, almost
blotchy brush strokes he is able to simulate a survace tex-
ture. He is,unlike his contemporaries the Abstract Ex-
pressionists, uninterested in the brush stroke per se, but
only as the uneven application of paint enlivens the painting
and helps to strengthen the visual impact.

Shahn's use of color is bold and unusual, He has been
greatly criticized from many sides for his "messy and mon-
otonously flat" colorl, for his failure to use broken color
to achieve "sparkling vibration",2 for the way he reduces
form to a "thin veil of color"3, and for his "use of 'bad'
color combinations such as brown and blue (and) pasty near-

4 In short, Shahn is criticized for

whites for skin color."
breaking some of the established rules of art and for doing

things which"are not done in mature works of art."5 He is

 

1Ralph M. Pearson, "Ben Shahn at the Modern," Art
Digest, XXII (December 1, 1947), 36.

2Pearson, "Ben Shahn at the Modern," 36.

3Ralph M. Pearson, The Modern Renaissance in American
Art (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1954), 120.

4Pearson, The Modern Renaissance..., 122.

5Pearson, The Modern Renaissance..., 122.

 

37

considered to be amateur and crude by some because of his
use of distortion and bold, raw colors, but nearly every
significant artist of our century has been criticized on
similar grounds of breaking with the past. Shahn does not
deny the validity of these value judgments, but, instead,
he states,

As to 'crudeness' and 'raw colors' and the

like, I believe that at times the crude areas of

a painting have a positive quality--and I use

them, consciously approving what feeling demanded.l
Therefore, as has been true in many other areas of Shahn's
art style, it seems that the artist uses color consciously
for the specific feeling he wishes to achieve.

The last characteristic of Ben Shahn's art style to be
mentioned is his heavy reliance upon drawing. Shahn is one
of our century's greatest draughtsmen; his use of line is
descriptive and energetic. His paintings are greatly de-
pendent upon and influenced by his drawing, and many of his
painted forms are outlined as if with pen and ink. His
drawings make use of many types of lines, both thick and
thin, and Shahn can convey a good deal of feeling with a

few simple lines. His use of line, as with painting, is

economical and direct. His line is often so spiky that

 

lPearson, The Modern Renaissance..., 122.

 

38

much of his work appears as if it could be reproduced in
wrought iron. Each individual line has its own peculiar-
ities, but each fits harmoniously into the contrast and bal-
ance of lines which form the drawing as a whole. Shahn's
drawings, like his paintings, are well—integrated yet de-
pendent upon contrasts for liveliness and enrichment. Descrip-
tive drawing, like all of the other characteristics of his
art style, is used by Ben Shahn as a tool by which he tells
his story and conveys his feelings about mankind. Thus,
Shahn's style of working is closely and completely aligned
with his philosophy of art.
Influences Upon the Artist's Style

Shahn, like nearly every other artist before him has
been greatly influenced in his style of painting by various
elements and incidents in his background and experience and
by certain other artists and schools of art. We cannot
imagine a more appropriate period for Shahn, the painter
of man's struggles and suffering, to have painted than our
own hapless, peaceless, disturbed century, and thus we ob-
serve that Shahn is a product of his own time, both an
observer of it and a commentator upon it. That he was
greatly influenced by the period in which he lived and lives
seems unquestionable, for the great issues of his times are

the subjects of his paintings.

39

My tropism toward suffering may have become

set during the Depression--I'm not sure about that,

but it was certainly sharpened during the war. As

the post-war period drew out, with its sense of

aimlessness and lack of destination, I began to

feel that suffering was innate in man.1
Shahn has reacted to and made comments upon the life of his
time much as his forerunners, Hogarth, Daumier, and George
Grosz did in their particular periods in history.

Some obvious and expected influences upon Shahn's style
have been mentioned earlier and come from his background and
early experiences. Shahn's hatred of injustice began when
his rabbai told him a story which seemed unfair to the young
boy whose home was still in Russia, but this hatred was cer—
tainly strengthened by the hard life his family lived and
by the things he observed in Brooklyn. City life left a
strong and permanent impression upon the young Shahn, and
he was never quite able to escape from it. City architecture
forms the background of many of his paintings, and city-
dwellers are frequently the subjects. Shahn's special
feeling for the working class no doubt stems from his early
associations with members of this level of society.

Not to be discounted, however, is the not so strong,

yet ever distantly present influence of Shahn's early childhood

 

1Lipman, What is American..., 95.

 

40

in Russia. The atmosphere of folklore and festival of his
small village crops up now and then in his work and lends
to it a certain surface atmosphere of gaiety and richness
of detail, particularly in his later paintings, which seem
to parallel the work of Marc Chagall.1 As recently as 1962,
Shahn did a work entitled "A Childhood Memory" in which he
depicts a Russian village,giving evidence to the fact that
elements from the Russian childhood of Ben Shahn are still
influencing his art style.

The artist's Jewish upbringing has provided him upon
occasion with subjects for illustrations and works of art,
and his early familiarity with the Hebrew alphabet instilled
in him the beginnings of his love of letters.2 We have seen
that the artist's experience in the lithographer's workshop
brought his early interest in alphabets and type into full
bloom. Also, as a lithogrpahic engraver he had learned to
work in a precise way, cutting the lines that he made against
the resistant material of the stone, and when he turned to
drawing, even with a brush and ink, he found that "this

chiseled sort of line had become a necessity" and that "the

 

1
Soby, Contemporary Painters, 42.

2Shahn, Love and Joy About Letters, 5.

41

line retained that style."1 Even in his painting, Shahn
found that the influence of lithogrpahy had done much to
shape his style.
...in my painting I found the influence of

my early experience very strong, for I loved--

and still love--the clear patterning of forms,

the balance and movement of shapes and the sense

of major and minor theme of which I had become

so conscious during my early youth.2
Thus, many of the characteristics of Shahn's style, suCh as
flat forms, directness, simplicity, precise line, and the
"readability” of his compositions have their origin in his
period of lithographic training and experience.

The years which Ben Shahn spent as photographer for
the Farm Security Administration were also influential upon
his style. He, of course, became interested in photographs
and began to use them more and more as structures upon which
to build paintings, and his present photo files, containing
many photographs taken during this period, will bear out this
influence. Equally as important were the memories he had of.
his travels for F.S.A. through the Mid—West and South, which

provide raw material for works of art.

Diego Rivera, the great Mexican muralist, was to have

 

1Shahn, Love and Joy About Letters, 15.

 

2Shahn, Love and Joy About Letters, 15.

 

42

some effect upon Shahn's work, and particularly upon his
murals, when Ben worked under him on the ill-fated Rocke-
feller Center murals. Shahn undoubtedly learned a great
deal from the flat, direct, bold, and well-related composit—
ions in fresco by the distinguished Mexican, and the Ameri-
can was impressed with Rivera's convincing social comment
and his use of art as propaganda. Rivera cited the primi—
tive Rousseau as the modern artist who had the most in—
fluence upon him, and, perhaps it was the "douanier's happy
combination of naive distortion, static Confrontation and
intensely realized detail that Rivera passed along to Shahn."l
Shahn's two trips to Europe opened awhole new world of
art to him, and there he observed and digested the work of
the revolutionaries of the modern art movement. He saw the
work of many contemporary artists not yet influencing style
in America but already great in Europe, and two, in particular,
impressed him during these early years. The artist whom he
liked the best was Rouault, and Shahn's work came immediately

under his influence.2

Perhaps the Frenchman's use of lum-
inous color and bold, black outline are elements which are

still present in Shahn's work today; certainly his use of

 

lRodman, Portrait of the Artist..., 103.

2Art U.s.A. Now, ed. Lee Nordness (New York: The Viking
Press, 1963), I, 82.

43

red and blue with black dividing lines reminds us of
Rouault. Shahn, somewhat surprisingly, was also impressed
with the work of Dufy, whose decorative use of line and
flat, arbitrary color can be seen in Shahn's art style.

Ben Shahn did not adapt as his own any one style which
he observed among his contemporaries in Europe, but instead
Rhehas been influenced by the modern movement as a whole
and has chosen certain elements of it to incorporate into
his style. While often called a realist, Shahn's art style

- .
shows a good deal of influence from the abstract school in
such areas as his arbitrary use of color, his use of flat,
surface color and form, his use of distortion, and his use
of geometric and abstract shapes.

During his second trip to Europe, Shahn came under the
influence of another school of art the "tight, hard pattern-
ing" of the Florentine School.l Giotto was his favorite of
the group, and Shahn appreciated the Italian's flat, con-
trolled use of forms which were forceful and direct. They
spoke their message clearly, and Shahn wished to incorporate

this kind of direct communication into his own work. Giotto's

work is characterized by flat figures with emotions written

 

1"Shahn Feels Deeply and Sees Clearly," Art News ,
XLIII (November 15, 1944), 18.

 

44

on their faces, soft, chalky pastel colors, and flat,
simple stage set backgrounds--all, interestingly enough,
present in the mature work of Ben Shahn.

Another artist whom Shahn reveres greatly and who has
had influence upon his art style is Paul Klee. Shahn's ner—
vous, skipping line owes much to the drawing of the Swiss
artist. Klee's imaginative use of line and color has created
many strange, unusual, and whimsical creatures which are
highly original and personal. Shahn admires this creative
quality in Klee's work and states, "Where content is highly

subjective and personal new forms emerge. That is what Klee

 

l Shahn, the individual,

ought to mean to other artists."
enjoys methods of expression which are unusual and original,
and he has incorporated elements from the work of Klee into
his own style, particularly in his more recent work. Shahn's
flat use of color and subtle color gradations remind us of
the paintings of Klee, and in such works as "Age of Anxiety"
and "The Physicist" Shahn uses delicately modulated and
related color squares which suggest strongly the influence

of Klee. The Swiss artist's use of composition and his

pleasure in surface pattern can be found in Shahn's work.

 

lHenry Geldzahler, American Painting in the Twentieth
Century (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1965), 113.

45

"That Friday: Yaizu" by Shahn brings to mind various village
and town scenes by Klee, and Shahn's "Kuboyama" (Plate VI)
reminds us of similar heads by Klee. Clearly, Paul Klee

has had an important influence upon both the painting and
drawing of Ben Shahn.

When surveying the work of Shahn before 1950 one cannot
help but notice some strong and convincing similarities be-
tween his work and that of Surrealism. Perhaps because of
his admiration for Klee's work, probably because he took
special notice of Chirico when writing an article about his

1935 show at the Matisse Gallery for Art Front, and cer—

 

tainly because of his closeness of spirit and intention

with the Surrealist artists who delved into the inner side

of man's feelings and emotions, Shahn came under a strong
influence from Surrealism, and many striking resemblances

may be seen in his work. Shahn's use of void, airless land—
scape backgrounds with blue, cloudless skies seems to derive
from the Surrealist world as does his juxtaposition of strange
and seemingly unrelated and uncomplementary details. Shahn's
figures sometimes stare off into space in a detached manner,
looking at neither the viewer nor their companions, almost

as if transfixed in some sort of Surrealist dream world of
the subconscious. .AS‘we'hamenoted, Shahn's compositions

are frequently imbued with a supreme sense of loneliness and

46

isolation seemingly awaiting impending doom, much as in
Chirico's "Melancholy and Mystery of a Street". As with
Surrealism, Shahn's use of symbolism and his intended
meaning at times seemsunclear and difficult to determine,
largely because it is personal. Shahn's work, as with
Surrealism, is intended to deepen our awareness of ourselves
and of others; Shahn makes us aware of our emotions and
feelings, and Surrealism directs us to our subconscious.
It seems quite clear that Surrealism has had a very forma-
tive influence upon the art style of the artist, but
Surrealism, to Shahn, was too impersonal and incomplete.
But the great failure of all such art, at

least in my own view, lies in the fact that man's

most able self is his conscious self--his intending

self. The psychological View can at best, even

assuming that it were accurate, tell us what man

is in spite of himself..But the values of man, if

he has any at all, reside in his intentions, in the

degree to which he has moved away from the brute,

in his intellect at its peak and in his humanity

at its peak.1
Thus, Shahn was able to "pick and choose" those elements in
the style of Surrealsim which best suited his own philosophy
of art without coming under the influence of the entire school.

In the last twenty years a freer, looser, more painterly

technique can be seen in Shahn's works. This new tendency

 

lBen Shahn, The Shape of Content (New York: Vintage
Books, 1957), 51.

47

is found, in particular, in his background and reminds us
very strongly of Abstract Expressionism. For example, in

his "Portrait of Dag Hammerskjold" the background above the
figure could easily stand alone as a painting in the Abstract
Expressionist style. Shahn cannot accept the philosophy of
this school of art, for to him it is without content, yet,

he has been influenced by its painting style which he has
found pleasing.

Throughout his career Shahn has taken, whether con-
sciously or subconsciously, various characteristics of the
style of different artists and schools of art and made them
his own. In every case Shahn does not borrow directly but
integrates each item into his own style and philosophy of
art. He is an artist who has painted according to his con-
victions despite the current trends in art, and his style
remains highly personal and expressive. His influence upon
other artists has been widespread, both in America and Europe,
and commercial artists, in particular, have ardently followed
his style.1 Among American painters Andrew wyeth seems the
most noteworthy of those influenced by Shahn. wyeth's

themes have picked up the "sense of loneliness and of

 

1Art News, LVIII (April, 1959), 17.

48

spiritual malaise in the American scene" that has typified
Shahn, and wyeth uses Shahn's method of appealing to our
sense of fantasy by "setting a figure starkly against an
intricately embroidered expanse of nature."1 Shahn, there-
fore, seems significant in his time as an artist of original
ideas who copies none and influences many.

Develgpment of the Artist's Style

 

Ben Shahn's style of painting has not remained constant
throughout the bulk of his work, but it has changed and
developed as the artist, himself, has changed and developed
in his ideas about painting.

The changes that an artist's work undergoes

are the efforts that he makes to get closer to his

fundamental ideas. They are the efforts to form-

ulate in a visual language or, if you prefer, by
visual means, the most deeply-penetrating thinking

of which he is capable. The thinking he likes best,

which means the most to him, is of paramount im-

portance in his hierarchy of values...thinking is

inseparable from emotion.2
Thus, Shahn, as a thinking artist, has made various changes
in his work in order to bring it more closely in line with

his fundamental beliefs.

Several trends of development are apparent when studying

 

1Sam Hunter, Modern American Painting and Sculpture
(New York: Dell Publishing Co., Inc., 1959), 117.

2Lipman, What is American..., 95.

 

49

Shahn's work from 1930 to the present. His approach tends
to become more general as he progresses, and he seeks more
and more to arrive at universal meaning in his paintings.
In the Sacco—Vanzetti series Shahn worked from photographs
to portray accurately the people involved in the story, and
he dealt with the particular events surrounding the trial
only. The viewer may generalize from this series, feelings
against racial injustice and sympathy for the working class,
but the realistic image of Sacco and Vanzetti is still pre-
sent before him. In Shahn's "The Saga of the Lucky Dragon"
of 1961 he was inspired by the particular events of the
story, but he was not content to depict the people involved
in a realistic manner and merely to imply the more universal
message he hoped to impart. Instead, he aimed directly at
the universal meaning. The fisherman who died does not have
the individual characteristics of the actual man involved,
but, rather, the generalized features which make him sym-
bolize all of mankind and which make the viewer feel that
he, too, is involved in this story and is personally threat—
ened by the horror of atomic warfare.

Clearly, Shahn's approach to painting has developed
and enlarged since he first came to national attention in
the early thirties. With this new approach Shahn faces the

inherent danger of becoming generalized to the point that

50

meaning is lost for the individual. Some of his recent
works seem more difficult to interpret than his early work
of the thirties, but in the works, such as "Allegory",
where his idea of achieving universality is utilized in its
most meaningful manner, Shahn is able to communicate in an
unprecedented manner.
I had once believed that the incidental, the

individual; and the topical were enough; that in

such instances of life all of life could be im-

plied.

But then I came to feel that that was not
enough. I wanted to reach farther, to tap some

sort of universal experience, to create symbols

that would have some such universal quality.1
Shahn's search for the universal has brought into his art
the use of symbolism and, thus we find firebeasts, harpies
and other creatures symbolizing universal meanings.

Nearly every area of Shahn's style has been effected
by his gradual move from the specific to the general. His
art has become more linear and more two-dimensional and
flat, as we shall see later, with three—dimensional modeling
nearly disappearing. When Shahn was more concerned with
the specific it was necessary for him to paint in a nat-

uralistic manner, but not that he chooses to underline the

universal, forms have become more generalized and he no

 

lShahn, Shape of Content, 52.

51

longer is dependent upon realistic rendering. With the
introduction of moregmmeralized forms Shahn is not as con-
cerned with details and, therefore, with the use of the
photograph to supply these details accurately. In 1939,
when painting "Sunday Football" (Plate II), Shahn searched
through hundreds of election posters until he found the one
he wished to incorporate as a detail in his painting, though
to the average person, election posters all seem very much
alike. This type of precise interest in the smallest details
of reality is not true of Shahn today. Although he still
uses details to help us sense the peculiarities of the sub-
jects he depicts, these details are often no longer drawn
from real life, but, rather, from Shahn's imagination—-as

we see in "Kuboyama"(Plate VI) where a profusion of detail
covers the picture plane but is intended only to give the
surface richness and to speak to our imagination rather

than to be descriptive in a realistic manner.

As we study the body of Shahn's work we find a progress—
ive development in composition. The artist seems to become
more skilful and sophisticated in his use of composition as
time goes on, and his canvases become more unified and bal—
anced. Shahn's later work, such as "Chicago" done in 1955,
is noteworthy in its use of space with well-integrated com—

position filling most of the available picture plane with

52

balanced and unified forms. In contrast, we see in the
artist's earlier paintings, like "Tom Mooney with his Mother
and his Wife" of 1933, a large amount of vacant space which,
although adding to the sense of isolation and loneliness,
does little to form a well-related and balanced composition
where all parts work together to form a pleasing whole.

If Shahn's composition becomes more complex and inte—
grated as he progresses, it also becomes more dependent upon
abstract arrangements of elements. Shahn's more recent
works would make pleasing abstract pictures even if one
were to dismiss the subject matter present. The artist
seems to be more concerned with the abstract relation of
parts to the whole than he was in his earlier work, and
he works consciously to make a balanced composition.

There wasn't this struggle with my earlier

work in smaller scale; an individual head or hand

didn't have to be designed this way in relation

to the whole.1
Thus, Shahn's compositional awareness has increased over
the years, and he struggles much more consciously today with
the relation of elements to the whole in order to form a

more pleasing abstraction.

Abstract and geometric shapes, themselves, become much

 

lRodman, Portrait of the Artist..., 34.

 

53

more apparent the closer in Shahn's work one progresses
toward the present. Such paintings as "Helis and Crystal"

of 1957 and "Byzantine Isometric" of 1951 show this tendency
to use geometric and abstract patterning of shapes upon a
surface. Although recognizable subject matter is still pre-
sent in these recent paintings, all forms within the picture
have come under the spell of abstraction and have been altered
from reality. Therefore, Shahn's use of distortion, always
present even in his early works, increases as time progresses.
Hands which were enlarged in the Sacco-Vanzetti series be—
come huge in recent works such as "From That Day On" of 1961.
Forms which still had bones and joints in 1933 seem to be
made of rubber with no skeleton at all in 1953. All sense

of realistic proportion is forgotten and distortion reigns

in Shahn's abstraction-dominated post-war period.

Shahn's spirit itself seems to change from 1930 to the
present, and the artist's work, which was once militant,
propagandistic, and full of protest, has become poetic, lyric,
and modulated. The great concern for human suffering is
still present but it has been softened in its approach and
made more personal. Instead of direct social criticism,

Shahn has turned to the individual's private emotional ex—

periences; poetry seems to replace satire.

As Ben Shahn's feelings softened, so did his color.

54

Colors which were once harsh and raw and contrasting be-
came luminous and brighter, subtle and softer, and more
harmonious. They related to each other in a more pleasing
manner, and the color itself became more arbitrary. In
general, Shahn's later works are brighter and more pleasing
in color than works of his early period.

Shahn's painting style, too, becomes freer and less con—
trolled. His brush strokes are looser and his technique is
more painterly. Color is brushed on with feathery strokes
instead of being tightly controlled as in earlier works.
Shahn seems to enjoy the act of painting in his later years
and finds pleasure in paint and color themselves.

Other tendencies in the development of the artist's
work include an increased interest in lettering as time pro-
gresses. In his work of the thirties, as in "Scott's Run,
West Virginia" (Plate I) of 1937, lettering is confined to
signs which Shahn adds as descriptive details in his story.
By the fifties and sixties, however, we find that lettering
frequently is given more space in the composition and has
the role of declaring the message of the painting, as in
"Alternatives" (Plate V) of 1962. In recent years Shahn has
also relied more heavily upon drawing in his paintings. The
use of line has always been characteristic of the artist,

but recent works like "Alternatives" seem to be dominated

55

by a mysterious line akin to writing. Certainly Shahn's
flattening of forms makes a heavy use of drawing more
possible since outlining nearly always makes forms two-
dimensional.

Perhaps one of the most interesting areas to observe
in the development of Shahn's artistic style is the changes
he makes in his backgrounds and in their relation to his
figures. Shahn's early works are usually set with archi-
tectural backgrounds which are often rendered in a fairly
convincing three—dimensional manner. At other times, linear
perspective is used to create the feeling of deep space be-
hind the figures as in "Tom Mooney and His Warden". At
any rate, in most of the works of the early thirties an
amount of space, sometimes like a stage space, sometimes as
more, exists between the figures and the background. There
is air between them and there appears to be space in which
the viewer could walk. Admittedly it is not the far—sweeping,
deep space of the Renaissance which cuts holes in walls, but
it is as much space as Shahn ever gives us.

During the late thirties changes began to appear in
Shahn's work. In his murals, as the one at Roosevelt, Shahn
employs an in and out kind of space. The background may '
zoom back sharply into space and then it is abruptly stopped

and brought forward again; things close to the viewer are

56

contrasted with things far away. Some figures have back—
grounds close behind them and others have a good deal of
space between them and the objects which form their back-
grounds. The contrasts of this type of background gives the
murals a surface interest and excitement.

While some paintings of this period, like "Sunday
Painting", still contain backgrounds which go back into
space, a new trend is developing in Shahn's work. The artist
now utilizes a flat wall to block off the distance and to-
shorten the distance between viewer and background and be-
tween subject and background. Examples of this technique
are found in "Sunday Football" (Plate II), "Vacant Lot"
(Plate III) and the famous "Handball". The blank wall tends
to isolate the figures, silhouette them against the back-
ground, and diminish the space in which they exist. Space
is beginning to flatten out.

In the forties, linear perspective is still occasionally
used, as in "The Red Stairway", but usually the illusion of
space is greatly diminished by the flat application of paint,
as we see in "East 12th Street". The more frequent use of
background introduced during this period was one in which
a very shallow space existed and an object of some sort was
placed between the figures and the flat, plain background.

The wall as such is no longer used, but the background acts

57

the same as a wall since no feeling of depth is achieved.
The object which serves as screen between figures and back-
ground is paper-thin and has openings through which the
viewer may see the blankness of the background. The object
used for the screen varies: in "Willis Avenue Bridge" it

is the bridge girders, in"Four Piece Orchestra" and "Peter
and the Wolf" (Plate IV) it is the trees, in "Nocturne" it
is leafy nature forms, and in "Trouble" it is a rollercoaster.
In each case the amount of space created in the picture is
very small, and Shahn, clearly, is moving toward a more flat
style.

During the fifties and sixties several types of back-
grounds appear, but all share the common characteristic of
being completely flat and two-dimensional. Some are plain
and painterly like"Harpie" with brush strokes adding the
only interest and texture. Others combine painterly qualities
and intricate use of line, as we see in "Portrait of Dag
Hammarskjold". Still others rely upon backgrounds composed
of geometric shapes such asl"Epoch" and "Age of Anxiety".

A last category makes use of a dark, splotchy, inky, almost
smeared-looking technique in which background and object
join,and the viewer has difficulty determining where one
begins and the other leaves off. Here the background and

subject are highly integrated and are so well related that

58

they become part of each other, as the examples, "Vulture"
and "Lute I", will bear out. Thus Ben Shahn's use of back-
ground has progressed from the three-dimensional to the flat,
and from the realistic to the abstract.

Many changes ahve occured in the art work of Ben Shahn
over the years. He has not been content to remain stationary
in his style, perhaps in the fear of becoming stagnant, but
he has constantly changed his methods in order to keep them
in line with his thinking. The changes in his art, whether
from the realistic to the abstract, particular to universal,
harsh to soft, or propaganda to poetry, have not altered
the underlying philosophy of all his work-—a concern for
human sufferings and feelings and a hatred of injustice
wherever it is found. Thus, within the all-encompassing
framework of his overpowering philosophy, Shahn has been
free to alter the tools with which he works without des-
troying his original and underlying purpose.

Conclusion

 

Perhaps more than any other artist of our time, Ben
Shahn is a painter of unchanging and unflinching conviction.
Through nearly forty years of work he has persisted in his
own style of painting, always insisting upon subject matter
or content and never succumbing to the popularity of non—

objective art. He has not been blind to the art of others,

59

but he has borrowed and digested those things which best
suited and could be best adapted to his own temperament

and philosophy. His style has always remained highly orig-
inal and personal, and his work has a distinctive quality
which marks it clearly as his own. Shahn,indeed, is a
product of his times; he has not skirted or ignored the
problems of his fellow men, but, instead, he has faced
squarely the crucial issues of his day. Perhaps the most
convincing argument for believing in Shahn's significance

as an artist is the very fact that he speaks clearly of the
issues and happenings of his day directly and forceably to
the men of his day. He deals with emotions and feelings and
those things which mold men's characters and personalities,
and men everywhere are moved and respond. Shahn's style of
art has changed throughout the years, but his initial pur—
pose in painting has not changed. As long as Shahn is able
to paint he will persist in telling us things about ourselves
and about the world at large.

Shahn's work has been criticized from many sides for
such divergent claims as sentimentalixm and crudeness, but
he continues to paint according to his own inner direction.
As it now stands, Ben Shahn is one of the most important of
American artists, having won recognition on the international

scene and having great significance for his century, his

country,

and his world.

60

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64
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cocoozoo 35.5% .530 be: use .8555 $55 33. £32351 5.33.38 . 32 . 3 38.3 as

 

 

69

Peterand lhewul/ . 1943 0 Collection, Mrs. Eero Saarinen

31

Plate IV

> mumam

bmzcc caeEBoQ was 393.309 . Nwm: . mgwgccgmi‘ mm

2R .4
51+”... ,1 wt 15%.
\ 89.3 w: :3
3%). 11». wk 3‘.
251...? n,
3% pt." Mr.
.nd... .3,“ 13¢
11ml}: ,

”my: fwd“ ...r.

p
{x

\
u
x» r.

.1.. .4 J; .,_Jf, .. .
3 fl ? Lid; ,1 A ., _ _ ._. A n . , .. ... z. 31.213 J; ..u 2.

 

7O

 

)(‘i Kubnyama (“Lucky Dragon" series) . 1961 . Collectian. Robert Straus

Plate VI

71