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
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.
war mean people
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.
world dull elements
I love chaos.... It's the poetic element in a dull and ordered world.
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.
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 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.
pregnancy desire united-states
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.
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.
war blood reputation
Every great historic change has been based on nonconformity, has been bought either with the blood or with the reputation of nonconformists.
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.