Sometimes, creativity can help to illuminate the world.<\/p>\n
Such is the case with the work of Ben Shahn, a Lithuanian-born American painter, muralist, graphic artist, and photographer.<\/p>\n
After studying art abroad early in the 20th century, Shahn found the formalism and rich colors associated with early European modernism no longer appealing when he returned to New York City in the 1930s and saw a \u201cchanged economic reality.\u201d Instead, he turned his creative eye to the street.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat he finds, like so many artists of his generation, is a kind of revived vitality of the sidewalk,\u201d said curator Deborah Martin Kao, who explored Shahn\u2019s life and work during a discussion Tuesday (March 2) at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum.<\/p>\n
Kao\u2019s talk was part of an event titled \u201cCreative Responses to Hard Times,\u201d which explored the ways that some artists responded to economic distress. The afternoon event included a discussion of the Clifford Odets play \u201cParadise Lost\u201d and a performance by the Living Newspaper company of New York.<\/p>\n
The presentations were part of the Harvard Art Museum\u2019s ongoing \u201cTwo-Point Perspective Gallery Talks,\u201d a lecture series that offers visitors a chance to explore objects and topics from varied points of view. The talks are given by museum curators, conservators, and educators, Harvard faculty members, and outside scholars. The series, part of the museum\u2019s effort to collaborate with departments from across the University on educational initiatives, was developed to help \u201cstimulate thinking about works of art and encourage participants to explore their own ways of seeing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Inspired by newspaper photographs, Shahn took to Manhattan\u2019s streets to capture photos of the era and everyday people. He could employ subterfuge in his quest for authenticity, noted Kao. He used a small, right-angle viewfinder that allowed him to point his camera in one direction while taking pictures of subjects actually off to the side, unaware of the lens.<\/p>\n
Kao, head curator and Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography at the museum, discussed the differences in dress, immigrant status, and ethnicity present in a black-and-white photograph by Shahn from the early 1930s, and his drawing of the same scene. The works depict an African-American laborer leaning against a pilaster, juxtaposed with a seated white man in a suit.<\/p>\n
In addition to the image\u2019s gripping subject matter and \u201ccomplicated structure,\u201d Shahn\u2019s work renders the viewer an active observer, said Kao.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are being put directly on the sidewalks of New York, directly on the stage of the living theater that he was interested in displaying. \u2026You are literally being sandwiched into that street scene.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shahn\u2019s work, added Kao, was seen as pushing back \u201cagainst ideas of what high art is, how art should engage the everyday world, and what art can mean in the larger society.\u201d<\/p>\n