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Ben Shahn Biography

Ben Shahn (September 12, 1898 – March 14, 1969) was 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.

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Ben Shahn Quotes

To abstract is to draw out the essence of a matter.

Essence, Matter, Abstract

Art almost always has its ingredient of impudence, its flouting of established authority, so that it may substitute its own authority and its own enlightenment.

Art, Enlightenment, May, Established, Substitute

I became interested in photography when I found my own sketching was inadequate.

Photography, Sketching, Found, Interested

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.

Art, Believe, Consist, Emotional, Enrich, Increase

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.

Art, Men, Today, Remind, Mission, Time

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.

Photography, Eye, Decision, Course

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.

Pregnancy, Desire, United States, Hoboken, Depression, Know

Forms in art arise from the impact of idea upon material. . . so that thinking and belief and attitudes may endure as actual things.

Art, Attitude, Thinking, Forms, Attitudes

Every great historic change has been based on nonconformity, has been bought either with the blood or with the reputation of nonconformists.

Based, Blood, Change, Nonconformity, Reputation, War

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.

Art, Wall, Pride, Lovers, Point, Having

Paint what you are, paint what you believe, paint what you feel.

Believe, Feels, Paint

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.

Art, Numbers, Quality, Glance, Bearing, Concepts

I love chaos. . . . It's the poetic element in a dull and ordered world.

Dull, Elements, Love, Ordered, World

I believe that if it were left to artists to choose their own labels, most would choose none.

Artist, Believe, Labels, Left

An ametuer is an artist who supports himself with outside jobs which enable him to paint. A professional is someone whose wife works to enable him to paint.

Jobs, Artist, Wife, Works, Professional

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.

Skills, Special, Propaganda, Photographic, Department

I feel, having the choices I had, I felt I had more control over my own medium than I did over photography.

Choices, Medium, Mediums, Photography

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.

Editing, Negative, Number, Numbers, Roy, Stopped

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.

Degree, Mean, People, Talk, War

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.

Thinking, Ideas, Weight, Pronounce, Triviality, Person

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Ben Shahn Biography

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