Carnival - Ben Shahn | Museo Thyssen

Pissarro
<exchanging gazes> 6

Pissarro

4 June to 15 September 2013

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Autor:: Camille Pissarro
Título:: Self-portrait
Fecha:: 1903

Técnica:: Oil on canvas
Medidas:: 41 x 33 cm.
Ubicacion:: Tate: gift of Lucien Pissarro, the artist's son, 1931.

<exchanging gazes> 6: Reflections. From Van Eyck to Magritte

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From 10 June to 15 September 2013

Autor:: Jan van Eyck
Título:: The Annunciation Diptych: The Archangel Gabriel (detail)
Fecha:: c. 1433-1435

Técnica: Oil on panel: Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Nº INV. 137.a (1933.11.1)

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Carnival

Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection

Autor:: Ben Shahn
Título:: Carnival
Fecha:: 1946

Técnica:: Tempera on masonite
Medidas:: 56 x 75.5 cm
Úbicacion:: Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Numero de inventario: INV. Nr. 756 (1979.71)

More information about this work

Ben Shahn, as much a photographer as he was a painter, often used photographs as a starting point for his paintings. In Carnival he juxtaposes an image from a photograph of a sleeping funfair stallholder with one of a couple enjoying a fairground ride. However, he uses photographs in his painting to tell a substantially different story: the stallholder asleep on the counter of a target shooting stall in the photograph becomes a sleeping visitor to the funfair, lying placidly on a bench next to a couple with their backs to the viewer, while the couple on one of the rides, in the background, takes on a rather unreal appearance in the painting as they are hovering in an indeterminate space.

Shahn creates an abstraction of his own photographs by eliminating all superfluous detail and, by decontextualising the figures and compressing the space, infuses the work with a surrealistic air and makes it a reflection on the human condition. The scene, which might otherwise appear to be a peaceful festive afternoon, is transformed by the unreal atmosphere into the visual representation of the main figure’s dream. According to Gail Levin, it is the dream of a solitary man about longing to be part of a couple; she thus interprets the painting as an expression of the feeling of loneliness.

Paloma Alarcó

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