Carnival - Ben Shahn | Museo Thyssen

Hyperrealism 1967-2012
<exchanging gazes> 5

Hyperrealism. 1967-2012

22 March to 9 June 2013

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Autor:: Tom Blackwell
Título:: Triumph Trumpet (detail)
Fecha:: 1977

Técnica:: Oil on canvas
Medidas:: 180 x 180 cm.
Ubicacion:: Private Collection, New York.
image © Tom Blackwell photo © Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York

<exchanging gazes> 5: Interior Scenes. Women and Daily Life.

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From 26 February to 10 June 2013

Autor:: Nicolas Maes
Título:: The Naughty Drummer
Fecha:: c. 1655

Técnica:: Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid. Nr. INV. 241 (1930.56)

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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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