1 August 2025
Little by little with Ben Shahn's The Shape of Content, beginning with the first half of the chapter “The Biography of a Painting” in which he unpacks his work Allegory (1948).
Shahn begins by summarizing Clive Bell's view that “the representative element in a work of art may or may not be harmful, but it is always irrelevant. For to appreciate a work of art, we must bring with us nothing from life, no knowledge of its affairs and ideas, no familiarity with its emotions.”
Shahn's take on this: “I have had in mind both critical views, the one which presumes a symbolism beyond or aside from the intention of a painting, and the other, that which voids the work of art of any meaning, any emotion, or any intention.”
I feel it's important to sit with this thought before going further into how Shahn digests symbols in his practice, which has already taught me a lot about forming a more generative morphological armature in my process, because it touches on something I recently spoke about with Danny—the severance of accountability from creation despite how one must always be held accountable for work that leaves the studio.