Art as a force for social change : Ben Shahn, 1898-1969

Abstract

Ben Shahn emerged as an American painter of significance in 1932 with the exhibition of a series of gouache paintings, "The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti." He was involved in the Social Realist movement in which artists painted the social ills of the common man. Many of Shahn's works of art became a weapon against these ills, to be used to exact a change. This change was to be political as well as social. Shahn hated injustice of any kind against people, no matter what their color, political orientation, or religious affiliation. This hatred is evident in his work and writings throughout his thirty-four-year career. Although Shahn claimed to change his style of painting after World War II, he did not lose his concern for people and events. Shahn represents a person from a period when political empathies leaned heavily from the left to the extreme right and these are reflected in his work. His career spans the Roosevelt New Deal era and McCarthy red-baiting era. He was important in that his art was used to sell the New Deal, and later reflected anti-war sentiments during the Vietnam conflict. Shahn responded to existing social phenomena with his work. His work related the search for humanity after the Second World War and the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Shahn believed that the artist's role in society was to bring humanity back to people.