Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Ben Shahn, on Nonconformity

Ben Shahn, on Nonconformity

Katzman, Laura
Decker, Christof
Martín, Beatriz Cordero

Paperback

Art HistoryAmerican Art - GeneralIndividual Artists

Publisher Price: $45.00

ISBN10: 0691273111
ISBN13: 9780691273112
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: Jun 3 2025
Pages: 288
Weight: 2.16
Height: 0.90 Width: 7.90 Depth: 10.10
Language: English

A richly illustrated new exploration of the painting, photography, and illustration of the politically progressive American artist

Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity offers a fresh and wide-ranging account of the work of Ben Shahn (1898-1969), a Jewish immigrant from Russian-controlled Lithuania who became one of America's most prominent and prolific social viewpoint artists from the Great Depression through the Vietnam War.

Revealing why Shahn remains so relevant today, the book examines his commitment to progressive political causes, from combating fascism to fighting for civil rights. Incorporating international perspectives, it investigates his World War II poster art, labor-related work, and engagement in postwar artistic debates. It brings new insights to Shahn's social realist and documentary styles and their evolution into allegorical, lyrical, and often abstract idioms that embrace the philosophical and the spiritual. And it demonstrates the underappreciated complexity of Shahn's layered visual language and how he experimented with modernist conceptual strategies--often involving photography--to create his paintings, murals, drawings, prints, posters, illustrated books, and commercial designs.

Shahn's guiding credo--formulated in the Cold War--asserted that nonconformity was the precondition for all significant art and great social change. Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity illuminates why the artist's work should be seen as a series of nonconformities driven by his steadfast dedication to social justice and humanistic values.

Published by the Jewish Museum, New York and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, in association with Princeton University Press

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