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 SHAHNTo abstract is to draw out the essence of a matter.
More Ben Shahn Quotes
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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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What 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?
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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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The artist is likely to be looked upon with some uneasiness by the more conservative members of society.
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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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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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Paint what you are, paint what you believe, paint what you feel.
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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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Form is the shape of content.
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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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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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How do you paint yellow wheat against a yellow sky? You paint it jet black.
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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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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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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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Only an individual can imagine, invent, or create. The whole audience of art is an audience of individuals.
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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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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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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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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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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 was brought in, not in the photographic department at all, I was brought in on a thing called Special Skills. I was to do posters, pamphlets, murals, propaganda in general, you know.
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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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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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I became interested in photography when I was sharing a studio with Walker Evans, and found my own sketching was inadequate.
BEN SHAHN