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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

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.
BEN SHAHN

Art Born Intuition
Content may by trivial. But I do not think that any person may pronounce either upon the weight or upon the triviality of an idea before its execution.
BEN SHAHN

Ideas Pronounce Thinking Weight
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
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.
BEN SHAHN

Mean People War
Being an artist is not only what you do, but how you live your life.
BEN SHAHN

Artist Being Life Live
Form is the shape of content.
BEN SHAHN

Content Form Shapes
Every great historic change has been based on nonconformity, has been bought either with the blood or with the reputation of nonconformists.
BEN SHAHN

Blood Reputation War
I was primarily interested in people, and people in action, so that I did nothing photographically in the sense of doing buildings for their own sake or a still life or anything like that.
BEN SHAHN

Action Interested People Photography Sake
I became interested in photography when I was sharing a studio with Walker Evans, and found my own sketching was inadequate.
BEN SHAHN

Found Photography Sketching
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?
BEN SHAHN

Artist Celebrate Fall Lines Neighbour
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
A youngster told me recently that he was going to give himself a year to see if he has talent. A year! It takes a lifetime to see if you have it. Painting is total engagement.
BEN SHAHN

Lifetime Planting Recent Youngster
The natural reaction of the artist will be strongly towards bringing man back into focus as the center of importance.
BEN SHAHN

Artist Focus Men
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.
BEN SHAHN

Decision Eye Photography
The popular eye is not untrained; it is only wrongly trained – trained by inferior and insincere visual representations.
BEN SHAHN

Eye Representation Vision Visual
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.
BEN SHAHN

Done Ordinary Taken

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.

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Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Ben Shahn Quotes