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BEN SHAHN

Name: BEN SHAHN
Author: Howard Greenfeld
ISBN: 0-679-41932-2

AN ARTIST'S LIFE

by Howard Greenfeld ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 2, 1998

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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, Shahn’s home. Perhaps frustrated by the artist’s loss of reputation in the years following his death, Greenfeld—who has also written about Caruso and Puccini—undertook 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 York’s 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 isn—t explored fully. Greenfeld’s hesitation to expose the man compromises the book and its subject. (40 b&w illustrations, not seen)

Pub Date: Nov. 2, 1998

ISBN: 0-679-41932-2

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1998

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
A PROMISE FULFILLED
by Howard Greenfeld

- BOOK REVIEW
AFTER THE HOLOCAUST
by Howard Greenfeld

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NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

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Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY

- BOOK REVIEW
FILLED WITH FIRE AND LIGHT
by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen

- BOOK REVIEW
THE TALE OF A NIGGUN
by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal

- BOOK REVIEW
NIGHT
by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel

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BLACK BOY

A RECORD OF CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

by Richard Wright ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 28, 1945

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This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.

It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.

Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.