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1. black
2. grey
3. blue
4. red
5. brown
6. white

All art is based on non-conformity.

Ben Shahn

Related Topics

ArtBasedConformity

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More Ben Shahn Quotes

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  If one has set for himself the position that his painting shall not misconstrue his personal mode of thinking, then he must be rather alert to just what he does think.

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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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  The apprehension of… values is intuitive; but it is not a built-in intuition, not something with which one is born. Intuition in art is actually the result of… prolonged tuition.

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  It may be a point of great pride to have a Van Gogh on the living room wall, but the prospects of having Van Gogh himself in the living room would put a great many devoted art lovers to rout.

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• 

  Of course I realize that photography is not the technical facility as much as it is the eye, and this decision that one makes for the moment at which you are going to snap, you know.

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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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• 

  Now, my knowledge of photography was terribly limited.

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• 

  Form is the shape of content.

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• 

  Paint what you are, paint what you believe, paint what you feel.

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• 

  What is it about conformity itself that causes us all to require it of our neighbors and of our artists and then, with consummate fickleness, to forget those who fall into line and eternally celebrate those who do not?

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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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• 

  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.

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• 

  I became interested in photography when I was sharing a studio with Walker Evans, and found my own sketching was inadequate.

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• 

  I believe that if it were left to artists to choose their own labels, most would choose none.

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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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• 

  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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