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
people sake action
I 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.
art philosophy rights
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.
art hate men
The values that reside in art are anarchic, they are every man's loves and hates and his momentary divine revelation.
artist style peculiar
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.
art numbers quality
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; it may be any one of an infinite number of concepts, none of which may have any possible bearing upon its degree of newness.
believe paint feels
Paint what you are, paint what you believe, paint what you feel.
art class sculpture
Each 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.
eye vision representation
The popular eye is not untrained; it is only wrongly trained - trained by inferior and insincere visual representations.
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.
taken ordinary done
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. 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.
art years giving
If you're going to be an artist, all life is your subject. And all your experience is part of your art. A youngster told me recently that he was going to give himself a year to see if he has talent. A year! It takes a lifetime to see if you have it. Painting is total engagement.
shapes painting affair
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.
art conformity art-is
All art is based on non-conformity.
sky yellow black
How do you paint yellow wheat against a yellow sky? You paint it jet black.