The Shape of Content

by Ben Shahn, Adam Gopnik (Foreword by)

Overview

In six wide-ranging lectures on art history, the problems of form, and his own career, celebrated twentieth-century activist-painter Ben Shahn explores the labor of artistic creation, the confines of formal instruction, and the realization of a genuine artistic voice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674302976
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	09/16/2025
Series:	The Charles Eliot Norton lectures
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	160
File size:	18 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

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.

Table of Contents

Cover

Frontispiece

Title Page

Copyright

Contents

Foreword by Adam Gopnik

1. Artists in Colleges

2. The Biography of a Painting

3. The Shape of Content

4. On Nonconformity

5. Modern Evaluations

6. The Education of an Artist

Credits

Index