More Shahn; Also, the Case for Dissipation

I visited some lovely Shahn frescoes in the Bronx. I also wrote about rich loafers and how they might save America.

On Saturday I attended an open house at the former Bronx Post Office on the Grand Concourse to see some Ben Shahn frescoes that hadn’t been on public display for about a decade. Since the U.S. Postal Service sold off the building it’s passed through a couple of different private owners and undergone a gorgeous renovation (see above). The current owner is leasing the space to a community college, and the frescoes will once again be available for viewing by the citizens that paid for them (OK, whose great-grandparents paid for them) back in the 1930s.

Some samples:

(That’s my daughter Alice in the foreground of the second photo.)

I was especially taken by this portrait of Walt Whitman addressing Depression-era workers:

… and especially by Whitman’s hand, a detail from which is below:

That’s a real Ben Shahn hand.

As Jonathan Moss related 11 years ago in the Forward, the Whitman quote you see in the fresco, from “As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days,” was not in the original version. Shahn originally used the following passage from “As A Strong Bird on Pinions Free,” which also references hands:

Brain of the New World, what a task is

thine,

To formulate the Modern—out of the

peerless grandeur of the modern

Out of thyself, comprising science, to

recast poems, churches, art,

(Recast may-be discard them, end

them, may-be their work is done, who

knows?)

By vision, hand conception, on the back-

ground of the mighty past, the dead,

To limn with absolute faith the mighty

living present.

Shahn, too, aspired “By vision, hand conception, on the back-/ ground of the mighty past, the dead/ to limn with absolute faith the mighty/ living present.” It’s a powerfully spiritual sentiment. But “discard them, end/ them, may-be their work is done, who/ knows?,” where “them” includes “churches,” did not go down well with one Rev. Ignatius Cox of Fordham University. The Right Reverend called it “an insult to all religious-minded men and to Christianity” and “propaganda for irreligion” and called for the mural to be destroyed. The popular radio priest (and vicious antisemite) Father Charles Coughlin made a stink as well. So eventually Shahn backed down and substituted the lines you see above.

My interest in the Bronx Post Office murals arose from the two-part New Republic story I wrote earlier this month about the Trump administration’s race to sell off the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building in Washington, which houses what appear to be even more spectacular Shahn frescoes. (At the moment I can’t get in to see them, but Shahn called them “the best work I’ve done.”) Conceivably the outcome in the Bronx could serve as a model for the Cohen if Trump goes ahead with the sale. But the Cohen building is at least two or three times the size of the Bronx Post Office, and it’s doubtful a private buyer would possess sufficient funds to renovate it, as opposed to tearing it down and building something in its place, reducing the Shahn frescoes and other art treasures therein, which include a Philip Guston mural, to rubble.

I explain the reasons for my pessimism in the piece (part one; part two), but maybe all you need to do is look at the rubble of the East Wing facade of the White House that Trump promised to leave intact. The Washington Business Journal, which either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that the Cohen is what one preservationist described to me as “the Sistine Chapel of the New Deal,” reported Tuesday that the Cohen as “ripe for disposal.” If preservationists are going to save the Cohen, they’ll have to take the Trump administration to court, and fast.

In other news, I posted a piece in today’s New Republic explaining why dissipation and “affluenza” within billionaire dynasties may be the only thing to spare the United States from developing a permanent aristocracy of inherited wealth. You can read “In Praise of the Idle Rich Wastrel” here.