Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection

Apr 2, 2016–Apr 2, 2017

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The years surrounding World War II in the United States witnessed the meteoric rise of abstract painting and a widespread abandonment of traditional figurative approaches. Portraiture seemed hopelessly outmoded to many artists, yet some could not relinquish their interest in representing themselves and others. The body, they maintained, was vital in an era marked by unprecedented human catastrophes, including the Holocaust and the atomic bomb. As artist Leonard Baskin proclaimed: “Our human frame, our gutted mansion, our enveloping sack of beef and ash is yet a glory. I hold the cracked mirror up to man.”

The works in this gallery bear witness to portraiture’s crucial role during this period. Combining figurative imagery with restless brushwork, distorted forms, and flattened color, they invoke the psychic impact of the era’s global conflicts and dislocations, exuding a sense of anxiety, foreboding, and raw intensity. Many of the artists whose work is featured here, including Beauford Delaney and Stephen Greene, sought refuge in enigmatic explorations of the self. Others such as Arshile Gorky and John Wilde instilled images of loved ones with meditations on mortality, while Grace Hartigan and Ben Shahn explored the human condition in portraits of archetypal figures.

Below is a selection of works from Cracked Mirror.

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Ben Shahn’s searing depictions of political controversies and economic hardships during the 1930s made him a leading proponent of the style known as social realism. In the wake of World War II, however, he shifted to symbolism, using the figure to portray archetypes, such as the two circus performers and suit-wearing man who appear in Everyman. In Shahn’s congested composition, the bodies of these figures are stacked tightly within the narrow strip of canvas, evoking the anxious atmosphere of the postwar years. Precariously bound together and yet seemingly indifferent to one another’s plight, the men appear to symbolize a world hanging in the balance.

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Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection

Cracked Mirror

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EVERYMAN, 1954

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Explore works from this exhibition
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On the Hour

Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection

Cracked Mirror

6

EVERYMAN, 1954

Artists

Explore works from this exhibition in the Whitney's collection

Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection