Every great historic change has been based on nonconformity, has been bought either with the blood or with the reputation of nonconformists.
BEN SHAHNI became interested in photography when I was sharing a studio with Walker Evans, and found my own sketching was inadequate.
More Ben Shahn Quotes
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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 popular eye is not untrained; it is only wrongly trained – trained by inferior and insincere visual representations.
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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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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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Now, when I came on to Washington to begin my job, I was so interested in photography at that time that I really would have preferred to work with Stryker than with my department, which was more artistic if you wish.
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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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The artist is likely to be looked upon with some uneasiness by the more conservative members of society.
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Form is the shape of content.
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The moving toward one’s inner self is a long pilgrimage for a painter. It offers many temporary successes and high points, but impels him on toward the more adequate image.
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An amateur artist is one who works all week at something else so he can paint on Saturday and Sunday. A professional artist is one whose wife works so he can paint all the time.
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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.
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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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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.
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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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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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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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I confess that Roy [Stryker] was a little bit dictatorial in his editing and he ruined quite a number of my pictures, which he stopped doing later. He used to punch a hole through a negative. Some of them were incredibly valuable. He didn’t understand at the time.
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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.
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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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How do you paint yellow wheat against a yellow sky? You paint it jet black.
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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.
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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.
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To abstract is to draw out the essence of a matter.
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The natural reaction of the artist will be strongly towards bringing man back into focus as the center of importance.
BEN SHAHN