Ben Shahn: Passion for Justice
2002, Israel |57 minutes
Synopsis:
A Jewish immigrant, Ben Shahn fearlessly recorded in paint and on film a broad swath of America’s social landscape, from the Great Depression to the Civil Rights Movement. This documentary presents the biography of an artist who fused political awareness with modernism and whose works were as likely to appear on the cover of Time as in the Museum of Modern Art. Rare television and radio interviews recorded before Shahn’s death in 1969 complement a retrospective of his paintings, sketches, and photographs. Also featured are interviews with Shahn’s biographer, Howard Greenfeld; his widow, Bernarda Bryson Shahn; and daughter Judith Shahn.
Ben Shahn: Passion for Justice Discussion
A pre-recorded post screening discussion between:
Frances K. Pohl, Author of Two Books on Ben Hahn and the Dr. Mary Ann Vanderzyl Reynolds Professor of Humanities and Professor of Art History at Pomona College
Discussion Moderator: Amanda Fortini, Beverly Rogers Fellow at Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas
About Asaf Galay
Frances K. Pohl is the Vanderzyl Reynolds ‘56 Professor of Humanities and Professor of Art History, Emerita of Pomona College. She received her B.A. and M.A. in art history from the University of British Columbia and her PhD in art history from the University of California, Los Angeles.
She is the author of the textbook Framing America: A Social History of American Art (Thames and Hudson, 2002; 2008; 2012; 2017), two books on the American artist Ben Shahn [Ben Shahn: New Deal Artist in a Cold War Climate, 1947-1954 (University of Texas Press, 1985) and Ben Shahn (Pomegranate Press, 1993)], and In the Eye of the Storm: An Art of Conscience, 1930-1970 (Pomegranate Press, 1995), an exhibition of selections from the collection of Philip J. and Suzanne Schiller. She has also published articles and catalogue essays on several American artists, including Shahn, Judith F. Baca, Rockwell Kent, and Allan Sekula, and on the Italian artist Mirella Bentivoglio and the Canadian artist Sarah Diamond. Her curatorial work includes retrospective exhibitions of the work of Baca and Bentivoglio, most recently Pages: Mirella Bentivoglio, Selected Works 1966-2012 (Pomona College Museum of Art, January 20-May 17, 2015).
Her current research interests focus on the relationship between working class culture and the visual arts. She has lectured on American art in the United States, Canada, and Europe and has received grants and fellowships from the Smithsonian Institution, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, and the Social Science and Research Council of Canada, among others.
During her years at Pomona College she taught courses on the social history of North American art (Canada, the U.S. and Mexico), feminist art, art and activism, and introductory courses in global art and American Studies.
About Amanda Fortini
Amanda Fortini has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, The Believer, California Sunday, Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, Rolling Stone, The New Republic, Wired, The Paris Review, Elle, Slate, and The Los Angeles Review of Books, among other publications. Her essays have been widely anthologized, including in Best American Political Writing, and she is a recipient of the Rabkin Prize for arts journalism. She is currently the Beverly Rogers Fellow at Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She lives in Las Vegas, Nevada and Livingston, Montana.
