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It is an intimately communicative affair between the painter and his painting, a conversation back and forth, the painting telling the painter even as it receives its shape and form.

Ben Shahn

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.
BEN SHAHN

Art Living Pride Prospects Room Wall
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.
BEN SHAHN

Personality Teaching Voice
Now, my knowledge of photography was terribly limited.
BEN SHAHN

Knowledge Limited Photography
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.
BEN SHAHN

Art Numbers Quality
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

Art Essence Matter
Nobody had ever done it before, deliberately. Now it’s called documentary, which I suppose is all right … We just took pictures that cried out to be taken.
BEN SHAHN

Call Cried Deliberately Documentary Suppose
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.
BEN SHAHN

Art Human Men Mision Reminder Today
All art is based on nonconformity … Without nonconformity we would have had no Bill of Rights or Magna Carta, no public education system, no nation upon this continent, no continent, no science at all, no philosophy, and considerably fewer religions.
BEN SHAHN

Art Philosophy Rights
The popular eye is not untrained; it is only wrongly trained – trained by inferior and insincere visual representations.
BEN SHAHN

Eye Representation Vision Visual
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.
BEN SHAHN

Artist Peculiar Style
Art almost always has its ingredient of impudence, its flouting of established authority, so that it may substitute its own authority and its own enlightenment.
BEN SHAHN

Art Enlightenment May Substitute
Only an individual can imagine, invent, or create. The whole audience of art is an audience of individuals.
BEN SHAHN

Art Imagine Individuality
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 SHAHN

Pamphlets Propaganda Skills Special
I feel, having the choices I had, I felt I had more control over my own medium than I did over photography.
BEN SHAHN

Choices Felt Mediums Photography
Forms in art arise from the impact of idea upon material… so that thinking and belief and attitudes may endure as actual things.
BEN SHAHN

Art Attitude Thinking
It may be any one of an infinite number of concepts, none of which may have any possible bearing upon its degree of newness.
BEN SHAHN

Bearing Concept Degree Newness Number Possible

It is an intimately communicative affair between the painter and his painting, a conversation back and forth, the painting telling the painter even as it receives its shape and form.

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It is an intimately communicative affair between the painter and his painting, a conversation back and forth, the painting telling the painter even as it receives its shape and form.

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Popular Authors

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