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Indepth Arts News:
"Ben Shahn's New York: The Photography of Modern Times"
2001-04-19 until 2001-06-10
Smart Museum of Art
Chicago, IL,
USA United States of America
Ben Shahn's New York will present a pivotal, but little-examined body of
photographic work from the 1930s by the celebrated American social realist artist
Ben Shahn (1898-1969). The exhibition will explore the function and meaning of
Shahn's experimental work in photography and his subsequent contribution to the
emerging field of social documentary, within the larger social and political climate of
the 1930s and the Great Depression.
This major traveling exhibition organized by Harvard University Art Museums will
feature over 100 of Shahn's photographs as well as many of his paintings, drawings,
mural studies, and related ephemera. His street photographs, taken between 1932
and 1935, defined urban life through the prosaic activities and expressive gestures
of ordinary people. Using a handheld 35 mm Leica camera, Shahn captured scenes
of everyday life in the neighborhoods of Manhattan and created images that
addressed such topical issues as unemployment, poverty, protest, immigration, and
social reform. Compelling examples of social-realist art in their own right, Shahn's
photographs also inspired much of the work he was more widely known for: his
socially conscious paintings and graphic works, as well as his public mural projects
that promoted social reform programs of the day. Ben Shahn's New York explores
how the artist's earliest photographs provided him with a fundamental means of
interpreting urban life in modern times and shaped a highly influential documentary
aesthetic that would characterize his work for decades. Infused by his commitment
to leftist politics and his interest in the cultural force of mass media, Ben Shahn's
photographs also provide an ideal vehicle for investigating the larger milieu of
American social and visual culture during the Great Depression.
The Smart Museum of Art is the final destination of this traveling exhibition. Ben
Shahn's New York was also presented at the Harvard University Art Museums; The
Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.; and the Grey Art Gallery at New York
University. An extensive catalogue, published by the Harvard University Art
Museums and Yale University Press accompanies the exhibition and includes critical
essays, an illustrated checklist, and an extensive compendium of primary source
documents.
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