I believe that if it were left to artists to choose their own labels, most would choose none.
BEN SHAHNIt 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.
More Ben Shahn Quotes
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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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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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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.
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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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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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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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I feel, having the choices I had, I felt I had more control over my own medium than I did over photography.
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It may be any one of an infinite number of concepts, none of which may have any possible bearing upon its degree of newness.
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How do you paint yellow wheat against a yellow sky? You paint it jet black.
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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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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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The values that reside in art are anarchic, they are every man’s loves and hates and his momentary divine revelation.
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The natural reaction of the artist will be strongly towards bringing man back into focus as the center of importance.
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Being an artist is not only what you do, but how you live your life.
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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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