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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.

Ben Shahn

It may be any one of an infinite number of concepts, none of which may have any possible bearing upon its degree of newness.
BEN SHAHN

Bearing Concept Degree Newness Number Possible
Now, my knowledge of photography was terribly limited.
BEN SHAHN

Knowledge Limited Photography
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.
BEN SHAHN

Art Living Pride Prospects Room Wall
I 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 SHAHN

Editing Incredible Negative Numbers Stop
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.
BEN SHAHN

Journey Moving Self
All art is based on non-conformity.
BEN SHAHN

Art Based Conformity
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 SHAHN

Ideas Pronounce Thinking Weight
Only an individual can imagine, invent, or create. The whole audience of art is an audience of individuals.
BEN SHAHN

Art Imagine Individuality
If you’re going to be an artist, all life is your subject. And all your experience is part of your art.
BEN SHAHN

Art Giving Years
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

Art Numbers Quality
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.
BEN SHAHN

Decision Eye Photography
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.
BEN SHAHN

Affair Paint Painting Shapes Telling
I believe that if it were left to artists to choose their own labels, most would choose none.
BEN SHAHN

Artist Believe Label
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.
BEN SHAHN

Desire Pregnancy United States
How do you paint yellow wheat against a yellow sky? You paint it jet black.
BEN SHAHN

Black Sky Yellow
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.
BEN SHAHN

Artist Peculiar Style

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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