Re: Ben Shahn and shtetls????

[Ari Davidow <ari...>]

>For Jewish and Yiddish musical culture to matter and flourish, the traditional
>must be balanced out by the contemporary.  The musical creations of people
>living today --whose art is an expression of their actual life, not some Ben
>Shahn <shtetl- cum -Lower East -Side> fantasy world of benign, wise  rabbis and
>kindly, old <bubbes> -- should be given more opportunity to be heard.

I guess this returns to what several people have said about 
knowing something before doing a meaningful riff. I would be
most curious to know how or where Ben Shahn became associated
with the shtetl in any sense, or, for that matter, the Lower 
East side. In thinking over his significant drawings--his labor
images, the pictures of poverty he created during the Depression,
his Sacco and Venzetti, and even his later, post-WWII works where
he became more involved with more universal themes, I cannot
picture anything he did about either shtetls, small towns in
particular (not that no images he did could have been set in 
small towns) or the Lower East Side, nor can I recall anything
written (in the limited canon that I have read), by him or
about him, that recalls even the Lower East Side as a source
for him. I have to confess that I cannot even place a Ben Shahn
image of a rabbi or of Jews engaged in anything discernably
Jewish (this, not necessarily to his credit), although I do 
recall a powerful image (not necessarily prayerful) of women
attending church.

Not that Shahn was perfect, but you seem to have associated his 
name with a place and a style not represented or referenced by
his work. I think that most would have instead placed him with 
that other "shtetl" artist (and friend), Diego Rivera, if so :-).

ari


Ari Davidow
ari (at) ivritype(dot)com
list owner, jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org
the klezmer shack: http://www.klezmershack.com/

---------------------- jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org ---------------------+