Paint what you are, paint what you believe, paint what you feel.
BEN SHAHNBeing an artist is not only what you do, but how you live your life.
More Ben Shahn Quotes
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Every great historic change has been based on nonconformity, has been bought either with the blood or with the reputation of nonconformists.
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Only an individual can imagine, invent, or create. The whole audience of art is an audience of individuals.
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An amateur artist is one who works all week at something else so he can paint on Saturday and Sunday. A professional artist is one whose wife works so he can paint all the time.
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When you talk about war on poverty it doesn’t mean very much; but if you can show to some degree this sort of thing then you can show a great deal more of how people are living and a very great percentage of our people today.
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It is not the how of painting but the why. To imitate a style would be a little like teaching a tone of voice or a personality.
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The moving toward one’s inner self is a long pilgrimage for a painter. It offers many temporary successes and high points, but impels him on toward the more adequate image.
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Form is the shape of content.
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The popular eye is not untrained; it is only wrongly trained – trained by inferior and insincere visual representations.
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I’ve been asked often what is the difference between an amateur and a professional artist, and I will tell you.
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To abstract is to draw out the essence of a matter.
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Personal style, be it that of Michelangelo, or that of Tintoretto… has always been that peculiar personal rapport which has developed between an artist and his medium.
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How do you paint yellow wheat against a yellow sky? You paint it jet black.
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A work of art rests its merits in traditional qualities. It may constitute a remarkable feat in craftsmanship; it may be a searching study of psychological states; it may be a nostalgic glance backward.
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Being an artist is not only what you do, but how you live your life.
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To abstract is to draw out the essence of a matter. To abstract in art is to separate certain fundamentals from irrelevant material which surrounds them.
BEN SHAHN