Ben Shahn
Ben Shahn
Ben Shahnwas a Lithuanian-born American artist. He is best known for his works of social realism, his left-wing political views, and his series of lectures published as The Shape of Content...
NationalityLithuanian
ProfessionArtist
Date of Birth12 September 1898
CountryLithuania
art men today
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.
photography choices mediums
I feel, having the choices I had, I felt I had more control over my own medium than I did over photography.
photography
Now, my knowledge of photography was terribly limited.
photography jobs wish
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.
skills special propaganda
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.
art individuality imagine
Only an individual can imagine, invent, or create. The whole audience of art is an audience of individuals.
art believe emotional
The artist must operate on the assumption that the public consists in the highest order of individual; that he is civilized, cultured, and highly sensitive both to emotional and intellectual contexts. And while the whole public most certainly does not consist in that sort of individual, still the tendency of art is to create such a public - to lift the level of perceptivity, to increase and enrich the average individual's store of values... I believe that it is in a certain devotion to concepts of truth that we discover values.
moving journey self
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.
art intuition born
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.
teaching voice personality
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.
thinking ideas may
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.
art attitude thinking
Forms in art arise from the impact of idea upon material... so that thinking and belief and attitudes may endure as actual things.
essence matter abstract
To abstract is to draw out the essence of a matter.
shapes form
Form is the shape of content...