I was brought in, not in the photographic department at all, I was brought in on a thing called Special Skills. I was to do posters, pamphlets, murals, propaganda in general, you know.
BEN SHAHNArt almost always has its ingredient of impudence, its flouting of established authority, so that it may substitute its own authority and its own enlightenment.
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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All art is based on non-conformity.
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The time when I had desire to go to the United States I didn’t have a penny. It was in the middle of the depression, you know. I couldn’t get as far as Hoboken at that time.
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To abstract is to draw out the essence of a matter.
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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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Form is the shape of content.
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Forms in art arise from the impact of idea upon material… so that thinking and belief and attitudes may endure as actual things.
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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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We tried to present the ordinary in an extraordinary manner. But that’s the paradox because the only thing extraordinary about it was that it was so ordinary.
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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.
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The artist is likely to be looked upon with some uneasiness by the more conservative members of society.
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How do you paint yellow wheat against a yellow sky? You paint it jet black.
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It is the mission of art to remind man from time to time that he is human, and the time is ripe, just now, today, for such a reminder.
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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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Paint what you are, paint what you believe, paint what you feel.
BEN SHAHN