The NYC culturati is all aflutter this fall over the major exhibits of mid-century American abstract expressionists. Everyone is talking about the Pollock retrospective at MoMA; the Rothko show at the Whitney is garnering lots of ink; there are two de Kooning-centered exhibits in the city; Francis Bacon has a show in SoHo. But I have a question: Why isn't anyone talking about the Ben Shahn show at the Jewish Museum? Sixty years ago Shahn was one of the most famous and influential artists in the world. Why has his reputation waned? Well, I think that it has says a lot about the politics and culture of fin de siecle USA.
I have a book of Shahn's paintings, and it is stunning. I can feel pain, despair, joy, confusion, anger, all these things, when I look at his paintings. This is unusual because most painting strikes me as cold and distant. The closest artistic kinship Shahn has, methinks, is with John Dos Passos. Like Dos Passos, Shahn was not all that original: his style is sort of an amalgamation of Matisse, Picasso, Leger. What those two lacked in originality, however, they made up for in inventiveness and honesty: The work of Dos Passos and Shahn juxtaposed, within the same piece, a vast array of people, experiences, viewpoints--in short, all of society--in ways that had not been done before. For instance, Shahn's "Study for Jersey Homestead Mural," a piece on display at the Jewish Museum exhibit that literally shows the tired, the poor and the huddled masses, is sort of the visual representation of "USA." Shahn's series on Sacco and Vanzetti passionatly portrayed not just those two but also their neighbors, the judge in the case, protestors in France, protestors in New York. He showed how that case affected the whole world, not just the two victims. Yup, both Dos Passos and Shahn tried to be big, they both attempted to capture all of society. At times maybe they failed or stumbled. But at least they did not aim so small as to be invisbible.
Shahn and Dos Passos are neither one what I would really consider "political" artists so much as they are "social" artists. Political artists too often come off as whiny, and usually express themselves with the sophistication and impact of a high-school literary journal; social artists, in my definition, concern themselves more with representing society and the individuals in that society, based not so much on what they would like them to be as what they *are*. To me, this makes for much deeper and more honest art, art that does not aim to manipulate or exploit.
Why the sudden revival of abstraction in art? I think Shahn's description of abstract art, in his essay "American Painting at Mid-Century," describes these days just as well as it describes the time it was written: "[T]he art controversies which in the twenties and thirties would have been on the level of polemics--however acrimonious--now [ie, in the early 50s] had new elements injected into them: suspicion, accusation, and fear of attainder. Artists, perhaps for the first time in history, were visited by government agents, quizzed at lengths about their friends, their associations, their activities. You may disagree with me that such a political atmosphere can have any effect upon the esthetic content of art, to stimulate the trend toward abstraction, or toward anything else. I believe that it has. *Abstract painting is, politically speaking, about the most non-committal statement that can be made in art.[...]Abstract art had left its political banners far behind and has for many years gone its way, 'disengaged.'"*
No wonder abstract art has come back so strong in the glorious days of the end of the millennium, in the days where there is no need for political statement because everything is so *wonderful*. The New York Times review of the Shahn show--which is the only one I have seen; those lifestyle-rebels at the Village Voice haven't even mentioned it--was headlined "Trying to Separate Ben Shahn's Art From His Politics," and the reviewer could not seriously critique the exhibit until he had done just that (at least to his satisfaction). Shredding this review would be sort of pointless, not to mention too easy, but I think the critic indicates what art--this includes fiction, photography, theatre, film, etc--is supposed to be at the end of the twentieth century: the flights of artist's imagination and contemplation, their private idiosyncracies and obsessions. What these all really represent, of course, are obfuscation, trickery, apathetic abstraction, and meta-artistic statements. Quentin Tarantino is brilliant because his movies are full of references to other movies and because he makes violence comical; the fact that there is not one human moment in all his films, that his attempts at creating meaning are bumbling and soulless--none of that makes him any less brilliant. Cy Twombly throws a few pieces of twine on a wall and is called a genius; that his aethetic refers only to art and never to life doesn't dim his star in the least. No wonder normal people don't give a shit about art: it has nothing to do with them.
Shahn is not guilty of any of Twombly or Tarantino's transgressions. No, Shahn's art does not have a distinct political agenda; but it does deal with subjects other than art. Viewing Shahn's paintings I feel humanity, I feel compassion and empathy. Shahn was concerned with society and people, and didnt think his head was the center of the universe. Give us artists who speak to us, not themselves. Give us artists whose subjects are life and people and society, not the irrelevant crevices of their minds. Give us more Ben Shahns
eric beck