Word: shahn
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...WORLD, some say, is wonderful in the eyes of the innocent. If there is any truth to this notion, Ben Shahn's photographs should be taken as the finest sort of proof. Shahn was not a photographer by profession, but the photographs which he made on the occasions when he did pick up a camera are graceful, articulate and humorous in the most sophisticated of ways...
...First on my list is R.A. d'Hulst's four volume edition of Jordaen's Drawings. My second Christmas book is Archibald MacLeish's The Photographic Eye of Ben Shahn printed by Harvard Press. Also, Nicholson and Troutman's Letters of Virginia Woolf--I expect to find them under my tree Christmas morning...
...painted such social-realist subjects as "unemployed Negroes, crippled war veterans and the ubiquitous workers with open blue workshirts and necks wider than their heads." Hughes says, "In fact, he never painted such pictures. Either Wolfe is making them up or he cannot distinguish between Franz Kline and Ben Shahn...
...survey course your man Hughes took included only one line about Kline (probably "Franz Kline -20th-cent. Am. abstract expressionist"). It's no doubt news to Hughes, but Kline went through a period of realism, including social realism. This is a painting by Franz Kline (not Ben Shahn) called Ex-Servicemen and the Unemployed (1941). As your man says, "One example will do for all." I'm afraid that leaves us with just one elementary howler: the one named Robert Hughes...
...abstract painter, was dutifully cranking out paintings of unemployed Negroes, crippled war veterans and the ubiquitous workers with open blue workshirts and necks wider than their heads." In fact, he never painted such pictures. Either Wolfe is making them up, or he cannot distinguish between Franz Kline and Ben Shahn...