An amateur artist is one who works all week at something else so he can paint on Saturday and Sunday. A professional artist is one whose wife works so he can paint all the time.
BEN SHAHNIt 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.
More Ben Shahn Quotes
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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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All art is based on non-conformity.
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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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How do you paint yellow wheat against a yellow sky? You paint it jet black.
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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.
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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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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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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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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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The natural reaction of the artist will be strongly towards bringing man back into focus as the center of importance.
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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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Only an individual can imagine, invent, or create. The whole audience of art is an audience of individuals.
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To abstract is to draw out the essence of a matter.
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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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I feel, having the choices I had, I felt I had more control over my own medium than I did over photography.
BEN SHAHN