Return J. Robert Oppenheimer 1904–1967   During the Cold War, both artist Ben Shahn and physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer would become targets of the House Un-American Activities Committee's anti-Communist suspicions. In Oppenheimer, the acclaimed father of America's atomic bomb, the intensely politicized Shahn found a perfect subject. Although acknowledged as one of the most prodigiously intelligent scientists of his day, Oppenheimer was declared a security risk for his ambivalence about the bomb. Very partisan to Oppenheimer's cause, Shahn drew a number of versions of his portrait, including one published in the Nation in September 1954. All the versions reflected the sense of unease that gripped both men. Here, the imposing head and rigidly vertical torso recall the attenuated saints and martyrs of Romanesque cathedrals. The ragged, inelegantly labored quality of the line, a torturously sharp-edged, almost painful, presence on the page, suggests the profound distress appropriate for a symbol of troubled humanity. Shahn's art "has never lost its fighting edge," art critic James Thrall Soby wrote, and "its profound concern with justice and truth." Ben Shahn (1898–1969) Ink on paper, 1954 National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution © Estate of Ben Shahn / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY Return

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