Baskin, Leonard

BASKIN, LEONARD (1922––2000). Leonard Baskin devoted his entire artistic career to his social ethical, and political philosophy. A serious intellectual, he underpinned his artwork with a complex theoretical foundation, focusing on what he called “moral realism.” This led him to depict harsh truths about the human condition, impelling him to “excoriate, attack, and denounce.” He had a profound opposition to the avant-garde in art, especially Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, and a lifelong commitment to the figurative visual tradition. Above all, he confronted the vast complex of life-negating forces dominating modern existence: war, persecution, personal alienation, nuclear catastrophe, and environmental degradation.

Born in 1922, the son of a rabbi, he was educated at a yeshiva and was always influenced by his Jewish background, linking it with his social consciousness like his celebrated artist friend Ben Shahn. Later he studied at Yale and the New School. A gifted sculptor and graphic artist, Baskin found prints more naturally suited for expressing his social vision. He always acknowledged his debt to the iconic social printmakers who preceded him.

Among his prints is a series of twelve gigantic works he described as the capital achievement of his graphic career. He responded to the recent Nazi Holocaust and to the political climate of McCarthyism with his 1952 “Man of Peace.” His signature political artwork, it features a central figure, caught in barbed wire, showing a facial expression revealing both his personal pain and anguish. The work, created only a year after the conviction of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, suggests the pernicious consequences of political persecution. A year later, the Rosenbergs were executed.

Baskin was also horrified by the possibility of atomic warfare. In 1954, he created another colossal political woodcut. “Hydrogen Man” is a stark warning to humanity about the possibility of nuclear annihilation. It is a dark artistic portent for the future if political leaders refuse to abstain from martial endeavors. To underscore his apocalyptic vision, Baskin subsequently executed this woodcut in blood red.

He likewise used his prints to summarize the human condition on the mid to late 20th century by addressing themes relating to human beings who perished in Auschwitz, Hiroshima, and Vietnam as well as scores of lesser known examples of barbarism and genocide. His hope was to confront viewers with the enormous gap between social ideals and actual human performance in the modern era.

Leonard Baskin never neglected topical themes. He ridiculed the arrogant and violent police officers who symbolized the struggles for racial justice during the 1960s. He also contributed artwork to the New York exhibition “Protest and Hope” as a major gesture of opposition to the war in Vietnam. His acerbic drawing “Our General” showed the hawk-like image of the general’s face and the pomposity of his medals, revealing an odious and dangerous military mentality. The iron cross covering his crotch highlighted the special immorality of the American involvement in Southeast Asia, and the placement of the cross alludes to the war’s possible psychosexual sources.

For the rest of his life, Baskin continued his work, often focusing on Jewish themes, including a richly illustrated Passover Haggadah in 1974. He also sculpted a Holocaust Memorial in 1994 at the First Jewish Cemetery in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Fern, Alan, and Judith O’Sullivan. The Complete Prints of Leonard Baskin: A Catalogue Raisonné. New York: Little, Brown, 1984.

Von Blum, Paul. The Critical of Social and Political Art in the U.S., Boston: South End Press, 1982.