Ben Shahn’s "Ohio Magic" depicts what appears to be a typical American Main Street. However, the street is strangely empty, devoid of passenger cars or even pedestrians. The only people are confined to a World War I–era hand-crank bus, an outdated form of transportation seemingly rendered immobile within a surreal brick wall. This dreamlike scene could as easily be drawn from the artist’s imagination—or memory—as from reality. 

Despite the celebratory American flags on the bus, Shahn’s melancholy scene captures the emotional impact of World War II on small towns across the United States. In 1945, as Allied troops fought and died in Europe and the Pacific, floral tributes to the dead, like the one in the shop window, became a familiar sight. The child, part of the postwar generation, appears suspended between the past and an uncertain future, suggested by the blue void that extends from the left of his building to the painting’s edge.