Re: Ben Shahn and shtetls????

[Kame'a Media <media...>]

No, Ben Shahn and =sheytls=!

Shahn did portaits of common people, too.
It is of these that I was thinking when I wrote before.

Perhaps Lionel S. Reiss or Artur Szyk would have been more suitable examples.
Although Szyk, too did not shy away from "social commentary".  His "The New 
Order"
(1941) is astonishing.

I think everybody got my point in the context in which it was stated.

Wolf

Ari Davidow wrote:

> >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/
>



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