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Ben Shahn Hardcover – January 1, 1993
Additional Details
- Print length168 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPomegranate
- Publication dateJanuary 1, 1993
- Dimensions10 x 0.75 x 12 inches
- ISBN-101566403138
- ISBN-13978-1566403139
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From Library Journal
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product details
- Publisher : Pomegranate; First Edition (January 1, 1993)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 168 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1566403138
- ISBN-13 : 978-1566403139
- Item Weight : 2.85 pounds
- Dimensions : 10 x 0.75 x 12 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #3,729,192 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #341,979 in Arts & Photography (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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Unique in the excellent accompanying text, more than Adequate inclusion of color plates, drawings, and photographs.
A must for collectors.
OVERALL ASSESSMENT. More than any other art book that I have read in my life, this book provides a more intimate description of what inspired the artist to engage in a particular style of drawing and painting, and what inspired the artist to develop this particular style, and what inspired the artist to develop alternate styles. And so, buried in the thousands of available books about thousands of artists, is this book by Frances Pohl which, in my opinion, can be greater inspiration to all budding artists, and a greater inspiration to all art-writers, then any other book. FIVE STARS.
MARGINS IN THE INTRODUCTION. The Introduction (pages 7-31) provides a biography of Mr. Shahn, where the margins have reproductions of pen and ink drawings, watercolors, tempura paintings, murals, and political posters, all by Mr. Shahn. The reproductions in the margins are all about 2 inches x 3 inches. For example, we find the pen and ink drawing, HEADSTAND ON TRICYCLE. The style of this drawing resembles the wire-sculptures by Alexander Calder (I've seen these wire sculptures in Guggenheim Museum in New York City). We also find, SUNDAY FOOTBALL, a tempura by Shahn, which shows old men wearing hats and peering in between slats of a wooden wall. They are watching a football game on the other side of the wall. The margins also provide a few photographs, some by Mr. Shahn. Some of the photos resemble those by other FSA-era photographers, Dorothea Lange, Marion Post Wolcott, and Russell Lee.
BIOGRAPHY. We learn that Mr. Shahn was born in 1898 in Kovno, Lithuania, and thahe received training in Judaism while a child, and we learn of his exposure to POGROMS, where the Russian government murdered Jewish people. We learn that Shahn's father brought him and his family to America in 1906, and that they settled in Brooklyn. At that time, Shahn was eight years old, and we learned that he was surprised that live in New York City was not like conditions in Lithuania, and was not like conditions in Bible stories such as the stories about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The reader will be pleased to learn that Ben Shahn did not suffer and that, instead, he was able to earn a living as a carpenter and as a lithographer, and that he attended three different art schools in New York. We learn of Shahn's success in getting commissions to paint murals in, Bronx post office, in post office in Jamaica, New York, in Grady Vocational High School, and in a community center in Jersey Homesteads, NJ. We learn of Shahn's first exhibit in Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), where he exhibited a mural about Sacco and Vanzetti trial. We learn about Shahn's 1-man exhibition at MOMA in 1947, and that in 1954, MOMA selected Mr. Shahn for an exhibition at Venice Biennial.
FOURTEEN CHAPTERS. After the INTRODUCTION comes 14 chapters, and these have titles such as: (1) The Early Years; (2) Dreyfus Affair; (3) Sacco and Vanzetti . . . (6) Depression and the New Deal; (7) Personal Realism . . . (12) Science and Morality . . . (14) Hebrew Alphabet. Chapters 1-14 provide 142 color reproductions and 20 reproductions using black ink with a pen, or black paint with a brush.
PAIRING OF A PHOTOGRAPH WITH A PAINTING. Of enhanced interest, is that this book discloses a dozen of Mr. Shahn's paintings with Mr. Shahn's photograph that was used as the basis for that painting. These pairings are as follows:
Sunday Football (page 17)
Sacco and Vanzetti (page 42)
W.P.A. Sunday (page 55)
Scotts Run, West Virginia (page 57)
Seurat's Lunch (page 61)
Pretty Girl Milking the Cow (page 63)
Vacant Lot (page 64)
Handball (page 65)
Willis Avenue Bridge (page 67)
Blind Accordion Player (page 75)
Nearly Everybody Reads the Bulletin (page 91)
Four Piece Orchestra (page 130).
CONCLUSION. I could go on and on writing about the delightful and inspiring aspects of about a dozen of the paintings in this book. But I have already written more than enough. But I want to add that, this book will be of enhanced interest to any person who has lived in New York City.
The book is not the usual artists portfolio here the paintings are really an adjunct to the fourteen chapters rather than a conventional art book with one painting a page. The first thirty-one pages reveal Shahn's life followed by a closer examination that is based around the paintings and includes excerpts from his writings. A thing I liked about the book is the addition of the photos that Shahn took as reference for his paintings.
Was he a painter, photographer or typographer? In fact, he was one of those rare creative people happy to uses any medium to get the result he wanted and I find it fascinating that his reference work, mostly photography, is so good that it's worth looking at as photo art. Page sixty-seven has his 1940 'Willis Avenue bridge' based on two photos taken in 1932, page seventy-five has an undated photo of an accordion player he took in New York and this turns into the wonderful 1945 painting 'Blind accordion player'.
The paintings run from 1924 to 1968 (he died in 1969) and I think the book provides an excellent overview of Shahn's work. It's comparable with Kenneth Prescott's 1973 'Complete graphic works of Ben Shahn' but as the title implies it features graphics rather than paintings or photography. Handsomely designed (though it's essentially a reference work and the images are not that large) which is one thing that Pohl's book suffers from especially the long blocks of rather unreadable italic type that are used for the excerpts of Shahn's writings.
Shahn's photography, closely tied into his paintings and murals, is covered in four books: Ben Shahn's New York: The Photography of Modern Times and his work for the FSA is featured in: Photographic Eye of Ben Shahn and Ben Shahn, Photographer: An Album from the Thirties and the excellent Fields of Vision: The Photographs of Ben Shahn: The Library of Congress . Look through these three and you'll see some many images that provided the source material for wonderful paintings and posters.
***LOOK INSIDE THE BOOK by clicking 'customer images' under the cover.
Reviewed in the United States on May 31, 2010
The book is not the usual artists portfolio here the paintings are really an adjunct to the fourteen chapters rather than a conventional art book with one painting a page. The first thirty-one pages reveal Shahn's life followed by a closer examination that is based around the paintings and includes excerpts from his writings. A thing I liked about the book is the addition of the photos that Shahn took as reference for his paintings.
Was he a painter, photographer or typographer? In fact, he was one of those rare creative people happy to uses any medium to get the result he wanted and I find it fascinating that his reference work, mostly photography, is so good that it's worth looking at as photo art. Page sixty-seven has his 1940 'Willis Avenue bridge' based on two photos taken in 1932, page seventy-five has an undated photo of an accordion player he took in New York and this turns into the wonderful 1945 painting 'Blind accordion player'.
The paintings run from 1924 to 1968 (he died in 1969) and I think the book provides an excellent overview of Shahn's work. It's comparable with Kenneth Prescott's 1973 'Complete graphic works of Ben Shahn' but as the title implies it features graphics rather than paintings or photography. Handsomely designed (though it's essentially a reference work and the images are not that large) which is one thing that Pohl's book suffers from especially the long blocks of rather unreadable italic type that are used for the excerpts of Shahn's writings.
Shahn's photography, closely tied into his paintings and murals, is covered in four books: [[ASIN:0300083157 Ben Shahn's New York: The Photography of Modern Times]] and his work for the FSA is featured in: [[ASIN:0674666143 Photographic Eye of Ben Shahn]] and [[ASIN:0306713128 Ben Shahn, Photographer: An Album from the Thirties]] and the excellent [[ASIN:1904832407 Fields of Vision: The Photographs of Ben Shahn: The Library of Congress]] . Look through these three and you'll see some many images that provided the source material for wonderful paintings and posters.
***LOOK INSIDE THE BOOK by clicking 'customer images' under the cover.
"168 pages, 100 full-color reproductions, hardbound book with dust jacket, size: 10 x 12." ISBN: 1-56640-312-X."--© Pomegranate
Reviewed in the United States on November 20, 2005
"168 pages, 100 full-color reproductions, hardbound book with dust jacket, size: 10 x 12." ISBN: 1-56640-312-X."--© Pomegranate
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独特のタッチと色彩がたまりません。
解説なんか読めなくてもいいや。