Photographer’s Window (Contemporary American Photography 1935)

Inscriptions

Signed, in white paint, lower right: Ben Shahn; signed, dated, and inscribed, in graphite, on reverse: Ben Shahn / Photographer's Window / Tempera / x 22 1/2 / 1940. Label on reverse: Museum of Modern Art Loan 61.2157

Label

Ben Shahn based Photographer’s Window on one of his own photographs of a storefront window in New York’s Lower East Side, taken during the Great Depression. His photograph showed the shop’s display of formal portraits—couples posed for their weddings or anniversaries; individuals; and plenty of well-fed, well-dressed children. In his painted version, Shahn disrupts the comfortable image of American life on view in the rows of portraits by inserting a group of subjects derived from photographs of the less fortunate that he made while working for the Resettlement / Farm Security Administration in 1935. Although both are similar in scale and presentation, his unblinking views of rural subjects contrast with the happier times depicted in the studio portraits. The juxtaposition underlines the striking social and economic inequities of the period.

Ben Shahn’s painting encapsulates well the conflicts of Depression-era America. When the stock market crashed in 1929, the country was enjoying unprecedented financial growth. This did not mean that everyone in the country lived on “easy street,” but rather that there was enough success that it could become the shared focus of those chronicling the age. Within the few years of the early 1930s, this began to change. Newspapers and magazines, artists and writers, politicians and community organizers all had to face the fact that vast numbers of Americans were suffering. The promise of never-ending prosperity that had characterized the preceding decade had turned into the reality of a cold, sick, and hungry populace. While the government strove to meet the demands of the collapsed economy—with its myriad ills ranging from unemployment to increased crime—artists responded by trying to reflect honestly on the nature of life in the present. Shahn’s painting brilliantly captures the decade in American history when the disparity between ideal and real had become too gargantuan to ignore any longer.

From the 2019 exhibition Cubism and Its Aftershocks, curated by John R. Stomberg Ph.D, Virginia Rice Kelsey 1961s Director

Course History

Writing 7.2, Writers on Writing, Wendy Piper, Spring 2014

ARTH 2, Introduction to the History of Art II, Katie Hornstein, Jane Carroll, Winter 2015

WRIT 7.2, Writers on Writing, Wendy Piper, Spring 2015

HUM 1, Dialogues with the Classics, Paul Carranza, Caroline Dever, Andrea Tarnowski, Timothy Pulju, Fall 2015

WRIT 5, On Poor Taste, William Boyer, Fall 2015

ARTH 48.02, History of Photography, Katie Hornstein, Winter 2020

ARTH 48.02, History of Photography, Katie Hornstein, Winter 2020

ARTH 48.02, History of Photography, Katie Hornstein, Winter 2020

ARTH 48.02, History of Photography, Katie Hornstein, Winter 2020

ARTH 48.02, History of Photography, Katie Hornstein, Winter 2020

ARTH 48.02, History of Photography, Katie Hornstein, Winter 2020

ARTH 48.02, History of Photography, Katie Hornstein, Winter 2020

Exhibition History

"Collecting and Sharing: Trevor Fairbrother, John T. Kirk, and the Hood Museum of Art", Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, August 22-December 6, 2015.

American Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art, Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, June 9-December 9, 2007.

American Paintings from the Dartmouth Collection, 1910-1960, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 17-April 12, 1998.

American Realists and Magic Realists, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York, February 10-March 21, 1943, no. 222.

Ben Shahn, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, December 22, 1961-January 22, 1962, no. 9.

Ben Shahn: A Retrospective 1898-1969, The Jewish Museum, New York, New York, October 20, 1976-January 2, 1977; Georgia Museum of Art, The University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, January 27-March 17, 1977; The Maurice Spertus Museum of Judaica, Chicago, Illinois, April 11-May 29, 1977; University Art Museum, The University of Texas, Austin, Texas, June 23-August 11, 1977; Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio, September 5-October 24, 1977; Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, November 17, 1977-January 15, 1978, no. 28.

Ben Shahn: A Retrospective Exhibition, New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, New Jersey, September 20-November 16, 1969, no. 37.

Ben Shahn's New York: The Photography of Modern Times, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts, February 5-April 30, 2000; The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., June 10-August 27, 2000; The Grey Art Gallery, New York University, New York, New York, November 14, 2000-January 27, 2001; The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, April 19-June 10, 2001.

Churchill P. Lathrop Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 14, 2003.

City College, New York, New York, January 1947.

Cubism and Its Aftershocks, Citrin Family Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 26, 2019-February 23, 2020.

Fort Worth Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, 1947-1948.

Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, July 8, 2014.

Jewish Center, Kansas City, Missouri, October 1946.

Shahn Paintings, Downtown Gallery, New York, New York, November 14-December 2, 1944, no. 12.

Shared Intelligence: American Painting and the Photograph, Columbus Art Museum, Columbus, Ohio, February 4-April 24, 2011; Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico, May 20-Sept. 11, 2011.

The Critics Choice of Contemporary American Painting, 49th Annual Exhibition, Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio, March 10-April 8, 1945, no. 90.

The Object World, Harrington Gallery Teaching Exhibition, ARTH2, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, February 5-March 15, 2015.

Publication History

Frances K. Pohl, Ben Shahn, with Ben Shahn's Writings, San Francisco: Pomegranate Artbooks, 1995, ill. p. 60

Laura Katzman, "The Politics of Media: Painting and Photography in the Art of Ben Shahn," American Art, volume 7, Number 1, Winter, 1993, Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art,1993, pp. 61-87, ill. p. 60 and p. 72.

Joan Wulff, "Bridging the Generation Gaps," Advancing Philanthropy, vol. 1, no. 1 (Fall, 1993), p. 15, ill.

Byron J. Allen and Michael A. Brodsky, "Aging in America," Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality, vol. 24, no. 2 (February, 1990), New York: Cahners Publishing, p. 53, ill.

Malcolm Cochran, in Treasures of the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 1985, p. 136, no. 127, ill.

Amerika: Traum und Depression 1920/40, West Berlin: Neue Gesellschaft fur Bildende Kunst, 1980, p. 322.

Ann Sargent Wooster, "New York Reviews," Art News, vol. 76 (February, 1977), p. 124.

Kenneth W. Prescott, Ben Shahn: A Retrospective 1898-1969, New York: The Jewish Museum, 1976, p. 69, no. 28, p. 37, ill.

Bernarda Bryson Shahn, Ben Shahn, New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1972, p. 72, ill.

Ben Shahn: A Retrospective Exhibition, Trenton, New Jersey: New Jersey State Museum, 1969, no. 37.

James Thrall Soby, Ben Shahn Paintings, New York: George Braziller Inc., 1963, pp. 15, 90, pl. 17, ill.

Mirella Bentivoglio, Ben Shahn, Rome: De Luca Editore, 1963, no. 21, ill.

Antonello Trombadori, "Il Realismo di Ben Shahn," Vie Nuove, April 12, 1962, ill.

James Thrall Soby and Mildred Constantine, Ben Shahn, Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum, 1961, no. 9.

Shahn Paintings, New York: Downtown Gallery, 1944, no. 12.

Dorothy C. Miller and Alfred H. Barr Jr., American Realists and Magic Realists, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1943, p. 66, no. 222.

Deborah Martin Kao, Laura Katzman, Jenna Webster, Ben Shahn's New York: The Photography of Modern Times, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, 2000, 340 pp., cat. 141, ill. p. 255.

"The Great Master of the Art", Tokyo: Japan: Nikkei Visual Image, Inc. Broadcast on December 16, 2000 on TV Tokyo, Channel 12.

Laura Katzman, Deconstructing Documentary: Ben Shahn's Use of Photography (an article in the journal in the monograph series of the German Association of American Studies), Heidelberg: Universitatsverlag, C. Winter, Spring 2001, ill. p. 187.

Barbara J. MacAdam, American Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Muesum of Art, Hanover: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2007, p. 97, no. 73.

Barbara Buhler Lynes and Jonathan Weinberg, Shared Intelligence, Berkeley and Los Angeles California : University of California Press, 2011, p.xiv.

Collecting and Sharing: Trevor Fairbrother, John T. Kirk, and the Hood Museum of Art, with contributions by Katherine Hart, Michael R. Taylor, John O'Reilly and James Tellin, Trevor Fairbrother and John T. Kirk, Hanover, New Hampshire: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, 2015, p. 16, Fig. 1.3.

John R. Stomberg, The Hood Now: Art and Inquiry at Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, 2019, p. 158, ill. plate no. 89.

Provenance

Lawrence Stanton Richmond (Class of 1930, 1909-1978); bequeathed to present collection, 1978.

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