I feel, having the choices I had, I felt I had more control over my own medium than I did over photography.
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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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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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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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.
BEN SHAHN -
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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Now, my knowledge of photography was terribly limited.
BEN SHAHN -
If you’re going to be an artist, all life is your subject. And all your experience is part of your art.
BEN SHAHN -
How do you paint yellow wheat against a yellow sky? You paint it jet black.
BEN SHAHN -
To abstract is to draw out the essence of a matter.
BEN SHAHN -
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 -
Only an individual can imagine, invent, or create. The whole audience of art is an audience of individuals.
BEN SHAHN -
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.
BEN SHAHN -
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 -
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 -
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