Quote

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.

Ben Shahn

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Ben Shahn
Age: 70 †
Born: 1898
Born: September 12
Died: 1969
Died: March 14
Artist
Designer
Graphic Artist
Lithographer
Painter
Photographer
Kovno
Benjamin Shahn
Benjamin Shan
Draw
Draws
Surrounds
Material
Abstraction
Materials
Irrelevant
Essence
Surround
Art
Separate
Certain
Abstract
Matter
Fundamentals

More quotes by Ben Shahn

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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 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.
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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.
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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.
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How do you paint yellow wheat against a yellow sky? You paint it jet black.
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I believe that if it were left to artists to choose their own labels, most would choose none.
Ben Shahn
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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. 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.
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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.
Ben Shahn
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Paint what you are, paint what you believe, paint what you feel.
Ben Shahn
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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?
Ben Shahn
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Forms in art arise from the impact of idea upon material... so that thinking and belief and attitudes may endure as actual things.
Ben Shahn
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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
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Every great historic change has been based on nonconformity, has been bought either with the blood or with the reputation of nonconformists.
Ben Shahn
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All art is based on non-conformity.
Ben Shahn
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The popular eye is not untrained it is only wrongly trained - trained by inferior and insincere visual representations.
Ben Shahn
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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.
Ben Shahn
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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
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The values that reside in art are anarchic, they are every man's loves and hates and his momentary divine revelation.
Ben Shahn
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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
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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.
Ben Shahn