Now, my knowledge of photography was terribly limited.
BEN SHAHNAn 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.
More Ben Shahn Quotes
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Form is the shape of content.
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If you’re going to be an artist, all life is your subject. And all your experience is part of your art.
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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.
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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 popular eye is not untrained; it is only wrongly trained – trained by inferior and insincere visual representations.
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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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I believe that if it were left to artists to choose their own labels, most would choose none.
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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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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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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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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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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.
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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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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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Every great historic change has been based on nonconformity, has been bought either with the blood or with the reputation of nonconformists.
BEN SHAHN