There was a time when nearly everyone recognized Ben Shahn's scathing pictures from his most famous series, The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti, 1932. Sacco and Vanzetti, two working-class anarchists convicted on trumped-up murder charges, lie dead in their coffins. Behind them stand the top-hatted men of the old, Anglo establishment, hypocritically mourning the poor immigrants whose lives they destroyed.

These days, it may be hard to understand how vital such storytelling artists were to the political life of their times. In Ben Shahn: An Artist's Life, Howard Greenfeld does justice to those heady days, placing both Shahn and his work in the context of the Great Depression, the rise of unions and social relief programs, and the beginnings of the civil rights movement. With uncommon fairness, Greenfeld also chronicles the difficult, contradictory personal life of this brilliant artist, who, for example, began and ended his career working on Jewish themes but cruelly abandoned his first wife, Tillie, and their two children to marry a Christian woman.

Greenfeld adeptly traces Shahn's development as one of the 20th century's most important illustrators and narrative artists, comparable to Daumier and even to Goya. Carefully researched, this biography is simultaneously respectful and objective. Greenfeld, who has also written biographies of Puccini, Caruso, and art collector Albert C. Barnes, has a gift for seeing a densely complicated life as an understandable, admirable whole. --Peggy Moorman

From Publishers Weekly
The centenary of socially conscious artist Ben Shahn's birth brings at least two salutes: an upcoming exhibition at New York's Jewish Museum and Greenfeld's (The Devil and Dr. Barnes) competent if workmanlike biography. "I hate injustice," Shahn (1898-1968) told an interviewer in 1944. "I've hated it ever since I read a story in school." That troubling biblical story of an unjust God is not the only influence that Greenfeld, the founder of Orion Press and a friend of Shahn's in the artist's later years, traces to his subject's youth. Explaining Shahn's graphic style of blending art and words, Greenfeld recalls the artist's childhood in Lithuania when, too poor to buy paper, he sketched in the margins of books. Once in the U.S., Shahn parlayed this skill into work as a commercial lithographer. His first steps as an independent artist coincided with the Depression, so Shahn's early career relied heavily on the Roosevelt administration's visionary schemes, described admirably by Greenfeld. In 1931, Shahn mixed social protest and art in a series that would set his course and make his reputation?The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti. Although Greenfeld includes stories of Shahn's failed first marriage and his troubles during the Red Scare, the real human touches are rare (as in the description of Shahn's second wife baking a great many angel food cakes while helping her husband complete an egg tempera mural for a Bronx post office). Also, while Greenfeld repeats Clement Greenberg's charge that Shahn's work was "rarely effective beyond a surface facility," he offers little other critical analysis. For the biography of an artist usually associated with fiery commitment, this has a wooden, even perfunctory tone. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Nov.) FYI: In December, Princeton Unversity Press will publish Common Man, Mythic Vision: The Paintings of Ben Shahn, a companion to the exhibition at the Jewish Museum. ($45 197p ISBN 0-691-00406-4)Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Ben Shahn (1898-1969) is among the most important American artists of this century. In this first illustrated biography of Shahn's full career, Greenfeld, founder of Orion Press and a friend of Shahn in his later years, traces the artist's life from his birth in Lithuania through his emigration to the United States at age eight, his early apprenticeship as a commercial lithographer, and his involvement with social causes in the 1920s and 1930s. Shahn's important work for various New Deal art projects (as an administrator, painter, muralist, and photographer) is explored in great detail. Making extensive use of archival sources and with the cooperation of Shahn's widow, the artist Bernarda Bryson Shahn, Greenfeld illuminates diverse aspects of Shahn's life. While placing Shahn's work in the context of contemporary American art (Shahn eschewed the abstract trends that periodically swept over his compatriots), Greenfeld also explores the often unpleasant but revealing circumstances of his personal life. Highly recommended for collections with an interest in American art or 20th-century biography.AMartin R. Kalfatovic, Smithsonian Institution Libs., Washington, DCCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The New York Times Book Review, David Cohen
Howard Greenfeld's approach scrupulously balances the personal and the political to provide a rounded portrait.

From Booklist
Even though Greenfeld, biographer of Puccini, Caruso, and the art collector Albert C. Barnes, knew Shahn and conducted his extensive research with the blessing of Shahn's widow, he maintains an almost painstaking objectivity. This restraint has yielded a careful chronicling of a complex and controversial body of work, and a narrative rich in illuminations of the conflict between modern art and politics, yet curiously lacking in aesthetic and emotional insight. But Greenfeld is the first to map the winding road from Shahn's troubled youth as a gifted young immigrant forced to abandon school for work to his becoming a technically masterful draftsman; a sensitive photographer who took hundreds of galvanizing photographs while in the employ of the New Deal's Resettlement Agency; a muralist who assisted Diego Rivera and went on to secure major public commissions of his own, all of which faced censorious challenges; and, ultimately, a revered and provocative painter of the people. Shahn hated injustice, Greenfeld declares, and deliberately created art that expressed humanitarian values. Never fashionable, Shahn was nevertheless hugely influential, and Greenfeld's impeccable biography will spark renewed interest in the enigmatic yet compassionate man behind so many hauntingly poignant images. Donna Seaman

From Kirkus Reviews
Although he knew Ben Shahn, had access to his papers, and spent many hours interviewing his widow and adult children, Greenfeld's biography remains curiously dispassionate. Maybe the biographer was only guarding his objectivity; after all, he felt a strong affinity for the artist. The two men met in the 1960s, and Greenfeld spent time with Shahn in Paris, New York, and New Jersey, Shahns home. Perhaps frustrated by the artist's loss of reputation in the years following his death, Greenfeldwho has also written about Caruso and Pucciniundertook the biography as a means of foregrounding one of the most significant figures in the history of twentieth-century art.'' Certainly Shahn was one of the most controversial. He made his career at a time when visual art offered an undisputed potential for political impact, and he invariably infused his art with his pro-union, liberal ideals. As a result, his work was condemned time and again for its political content by religious leaders, politicans, and even by the trustees of New Yorks Museum of Modern Art. However, Shahn was not easily intimidated; he was a brash person, and his work benefitted from his strength of character even when his relationships suffered. Rather than allow that complexity into his portrait of the artist, though, Greenfeld only glances at Shahn's personal betrayals with evident distaste. As a result, the biography begins to pull apart: At one level, it carefully tracks Shahn's professional progress from lithographer's apprentice to New York painter, FSA photographer, and famous muralist. At another, it offers only a sketchy emotional trajectory of the man who abandoned his first wife and family and subsequently sabotaged numerous other people. The coexistence of Shahn's political idealism and his emotional ruthlessness isnt explored fully. Greenfeld's hesitation to expose the man compromises the book and its subject. (40 b&w illustrations, not seen) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Ben Shahn's presence as an artist through several decades of American life was as pervasive as that of any other painter of his time. Beginning in the 30s, he created bold and powerful paintings of often controversial subjects, and in particular his portraits of Sacco and Vanzetti caused a storm whenever they were exhibited. After working as an assistant to Diego Rivera on the ill-fated Rockefeller Center mural, he began creating his own arresting murals - in Washington, New York, and New Jersey - which are among the finest such works ever painted in this country. He also excelled as a photographer as one of the distinguished group known as the FSA photographers, which included Dorothea Lange and his close friend Walker Evans. During World War II, he produced some of the most striking end effective propaganda posters, before returning again to painting, always choosing subjects that touched a nerve and were just as often politically powerful. Shahn also entered the world of advertising, but completely on his own terms, and was respected for it. His life was always involved directly with his times, and he was a member of the intellectual community throughout his career, as well as a courageous political activist. His unique, unforgettable work won him shows in museums all over America, including the Museum of Modern Art. Ben Shahn is the first complete life of the artist, and it is illustrated throughout with his photographs, pictures, and paintings.

FROM THE CRITICS

David Cohen

...Greenfeld's approach scrupulously balances the personal and the political to provide a rounded portrait....[The] book gives a convincing sense of a determined individual making his mark....Readers are left to infer for themselves a connection between his personal angst and his affinity with the oppressed. —The New York Times Book Review

Publishers Weekly

The centenary of socially conscious artist Ben Shahn's birth brings at least two salutes: an upcoming exhibition at New York's Jewish Museum and Greenfeld's (The Devil and Dr. Barnes) competent if workmanlike biography. "I hate injustice," Shahn (1898-1968) told an interviewer in 1944. "I've hated it ever since I read a story in school." That troubling biblical story of an unjust God is not the only influence that Greenfeld, the founder of Orion Press and a friend of Shahn's in the artist's later years, traces to his subject's youth. Explaining Shahn's graphic style of blending art and words, Greenfeld recalls the artist's childhood in Lithuania when, too poor to buy paper, he sketched in the margins of books. Once in the U.S., Shahn parlayed this skill into work as a commercial lithographer. His first steps as an independent artist coincided with the Depression, so Shahn's early career relied heavily on the Roosevelt administration's visionary schemes, described admirably by Greenfeld. In 1931, Shahn mixed social protest and art in a series that would set his course and make his reputation--The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti. Although Greenfeld includes stories of Shahn's failed first marriage and his troubles during the Red Scare, the real human touches are rare (as in the description of Shahn's second wife baking a great many angel food cakes while helping her husband complete an egg tempera mural for a Bronx post office). Also, while Greenfeld repeats Clement Greenberg's charge that Shahn's work was "rarely effective beyond a surface facility," he offers little other critical analysis. For the biography of an artist usually associated with fiery commitment, this has a wooden, even perfunctory tone. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Nov.) FYI: In December, Princeton Unversity Press will publish Common Man, Mythic Vision: The Paintings of Ben Shahn, a companion to the exhibition at the Jewish Museum. ($45 197p ISBN 0-691-00406-4)

Library Journal

Ben Shahn (1898-1969) is among the most important American artists of this century. In this first illustrated biography of Shahn's full career, Greenfeld, founder of Orion Press and a friend of Shahn in his later years, traces the artist's life from his birth in Lithuania through his emigration to the United States at age eight, his early apprenticeship as a commercial lithographer, and his involvement with social causes in the 1920s and 1930s. Shahn's important work for various New Deal art projects (as an administrator, painter, muralist, and photographer) is explored in great detail. Making extensive use of archival sources and with the cooperation of Shahn's widow, the artist Bernarda Bryson Shahn, Greenfeld illuminates diverse aspects of Shahn's life. While placing Shahn's work in the context of contemporary American art (Shahn eschewed the abstract trends that periodically swept over his compatriots), Greenfeld also explores the often unpleasant but revealing circumstances of his personal life. Highly recommended for collections with an interest in American art or 20th-century biography.--Martin R. Kalfatovic, Smithsonian Institution Libs., Washington, DC

David Cohen

...Greenfeld's approach scrupulously balances the personal and the political to provide a rounded portrait....[The] book gives a convincing sense of a determined individual making his mark....Readers are left to infer for themselves a connection between his personal angst and his affinity with the oppressed. -- The New York Times Book Review

Kirkus Reviews

Although he knew Ben Shahn, had access to his papers, and spent many hours interviewing his widow and adult children, Greenfeld's biography remains curiously dispassionate.