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 SHAHNWhen 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.
More Ben Shahn Quotes
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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.
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Form is the shape of content.
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An ametuer is an artist who supports himself with outside jobs which enable him to paint. A professional is someone whose wife works to enable him to paint.
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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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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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The artist is likely to be looked upon with some uneasiness by the more conservative members of society.
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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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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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Being an artist is not only what you do, but how you live your life.
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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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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.
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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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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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The natural reaction of the artist will be strongly towards bringing man back into focus as the center of importance.
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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