The Shape of Content: (The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures)

“The clearest, most forceful statement on art by an artist of our time that I have read.” —Frank Getlein, New Republic An illustrated guide to artistic creation from one of the twentieth century’s most provocative and expressive painters. Can art be taught? For the celebrated activist-painter Ben Shahn, the answer was a qualified yes. Any would-be artist can take a few courses and dip their toes in the water. But a true education goes far beyond the classroom. The Shape of Content, compiled from Shahn’s 1956–1957 Norton Lectures, appeals for artists to break the confines of formal instruction. In wide-ranging reflections on art history, the problems of form, and his own career, Shahn conveys the stubborn determination required to move beyond dilettantism and toward an authentic voice. But he delivers no easy formulas. Critics celebrate artists’ seemingly effortless moments of inspiration, yet genuine achievement is always the fruit of prodigious labor. To the perennial questions of “What shall I paint?” and “How shall I paint it?” Shahn replies: Live and think and try. Read endlessly, develop and test opinions, and above all, don’t stop painting. A figurative realist in an age of high abstraction and an unabashed leftist at the height of the Cold War, Shahn was never quite at home in his own time. The accessibility and popularity of his work, and his sometimes-unfashionable humanism, made him a frequent target of critics during his life. And yet it is precisely these features that have since cemented Shahn as a giant of twentieth-century art. Today, his lectures offer potent lessons for anyone who shares his belief in the power of art to change minds and contest injustice.

About the Author :
Ben Shahn (1898–1969) was an American painter, lithographer, and photographer. His work, commenting on major social issues such as racial discrimination, labor conditions, and the threat of atomic warfare, has been featured in retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid. Adam Gopnik is a staff writer at the New Yorker and the New York Times bestselling author of ten books, including, most recently, The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery. A Chevalier of the Legion d’honneur, Gopnik has won three National Magazine Awards and the George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting.

Review :
A remarkably interesting book, which puts the reader in rewarding contact with a questing mind and a humane spirit. The clearest, most forceful statement on art by an artist of our time that I have read. [Shahn] sets forth his views on both the practice and the purposes of art with a clarity, cogency, and incisiveness that any professional writer might envy, and he manages to interweave with this a good deal of interesting material about his own development as an artist, as well as a running summary of his opinions on contemporary painting in general...the book is highly controversial...also highly stimulating. To find a lucid painter speaking lucidly of art is a thrilling discovery...[He traces] the formation of painting from idea to completion, both generally and specifically with a clarity of thought and a precise use of language which should be a very archetypal model for all critics and painters alike. Points made in the collection are pertinent, lucid and most readable. A valuable addition to the appraisal of the condition of the arts.