Daily Podcasts Video Research

Ben Shahn was a radical artist — why didn't he want to be called a Jewish one?

JL;DR SUMMARY Ben Shahn, an influential American artist born in Lithuania in 1898, is the focus of a retrospective at the Jewish Museum titled "On Nonconformity." A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

JL;DR members get full summaries of all articles in the archive, including this one. Donate & start reading »

Tags

Jewish IdentitySocial JusticeCold WarJewish MuseumArtExhibitionSocial RealismNonconformityBen ShahnHarvard Lecture

Places mentioned

New York, United States
"In the companion catalogue to Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity, a new retrospective of the social realist artists work at the Jewish Museum in Manhattan, we learn he didnt like being called a Jewish artist."
Madrid, Madrid Province, Spain
"Its really important to not pigeonhole Shahn in any kind of ideological dogmatism, said curator Laura Katzman, who debuted a version of the exhibition at the Reina Sofia in Madrid in 2023."
Russian Federation
"Shahn was born in Russian-controlled Lithuania in 1898 and had a typical Yeshiva education (his father, a woodcarver and a socialist, was exiled to Siberia and escaped to South Africa)."
Lithuania
"Shahn was born in Russian-controlled Lithuania in 1898 and had a typical Yeshiva education (his father, a woodcarver and a socialist, was exiled to Siberia and escaped to South Africa)."
South Africa
"Shahn was born in Russian-controlled Lithuania in 1898 and had a typical Yeshiva education (his father, a woodcarver and a socialist, was exiled to Siberia and escaped to South Africa)."
Brooklyn, New York, United States
"Shahn immigrated to the United States in 1906, growing up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn."
United States
"He returned to America in time to document the Great Depression, and there developed his commitment to social realism."
Jersey Homesteads, New Jersey, United States
"The image of Sacco and Vanzetti in their caskets seems to reappear in his mural for the Jersey Homesteads, a tableau of Jewish immigration, with mothers or widows mourning weeping over loved ones murdered in pogroms."

Support this source

This item was indexed and curated by Cairo, JL;DR's web crawler.
Cairo Item ID 52381
Cairo Source ID 35
Retrieved 2025-05-24 05:31:01 UTC
Curated 2025-05-24 08:31:15 UTC