Forms in art arise from the impact of idea upon material… so that thinking and belief and attitudes may endure as actual things.
BEN SHAHNA 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.
More Ben Shahn Quotes
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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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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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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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Each artist comes to the painting or sculpture because there he can be told that he, the individual, transcends all classes and flouts all predictions. In the work of art, he finds his uniqueness confirmed.
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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 love chaos…. It’s the poetic element in a dull and ordered world.
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All art is based on non-conformity.
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How do you paint yellow wheat against a yellow sky? You paint it jet black.
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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.
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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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Being an artist is not only what you do, but how you live your life.
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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 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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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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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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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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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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Nobody had ever done it before, deliberately. Now it’s called documentary, which I suppose is all right … We just took pictures that cried out to be taken.
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Only an individual can imagine, invent, or create. The whole audience of art is an audience of individuals.
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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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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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The popular eye is not untrained; it is only wrongly trained – trained by inferior and insincere visual representations.
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Form is the shape of content.
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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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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.
BEN SHAHN