Art almost always has its ingredient of impudence, its flouting of established authority, so that it may substitute its own authority and its own enlightenment.
BEN SHAHNArt almost always has its ingredient of impudence, its flouting of established authority, so that it may substitute its own authority and its own enlightenment.
BEN SHAHNEach 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.
BEN SHAHNOnly an individual can imagine, invent, or create. The whole audience of art is an audience of individuals.
BEN SHAHNIf you’re going to be an artist, all life is your subject. And all your experience is part of your art.
BEN SHAHNI 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.
BEN SHAHNForms in art arise from the impact of idea upon material… so that thinking and belief and attitudes may endure as actual things.
BEN SHAHNNow, my knowledge of photography was terribly limited.
BEN SHAHNPaint what you are, paint what you believe, paint what you feel.
BEN SHAHNWhat 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?
BEN SHAHNI 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.
BEN SHAHNIf 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.
BEN SHAHNHow do you paint yellow wheat against a yellow sky? You paint it jet black.
BEN SHAHNIt may be any one of an infinite number of concepts, none of which may have any possible bearing upon its degree of newness.
BEN SHAHNOf 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.
BEN SHAHNTo abstract is to draw out the essence of a matter.
BEN SHAHNBeing an artist is not only what you do, but how you live your life.
BEN SHAHN