Ben Shahn Quotes

I look upon my work as a craftsman. I am one of many who practice a craft. I am one of many who have beliefs and fears and hopes, and I want to incorporate those, with all the tools I have learned to use over many years, into what I will call a piece of work. But not a masterpiece-I'd be terrified of that. There is a tendency for the artist to take himself seriously. But if I ever sat down before a canvas with the feeling that I was now creating a masterpiece, I'd lay an egg.

Every artist would like to communicate, but often he fails to ask himself with whom he is trying to do it.

each of them [artists] stands out as an island of civilized feeling in an ocean of corruption. Civilization has freely vindicated them in everything but their nonconformity.

What is it about us, the public, and 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?

I think that it can be said with certainty that the form which does emerge cannot be greater than the content which went into it. For form is only the manifestation, the shape of content.

freedom itself is a disciplined thing. Craft is that discipline which frees the spirit; and style is the result.

However glorious the history of art, the history of artists is quite another matter. And in any well-ordered household the very thought that one of the young may turn out to be an artist can be a cause for general alarm. It may be a point of great pride to have a Van Gogh on the living room wall, but the prospect of having Van Gogh himself in the living room would put a good many devoted art lovers to rout.

It [art] communicates directly without asking approval of any authority. Its values are not those of set virtues, but are of the essential nature of man, good or bad. Art is one of the few media of expression which still remains unedited, unprocessed, and undictated. If its hazards are great, so are its potentialities magnificent.

it is always in the future that the course of art lies

Today's conformity is, more than anything else, the retreat from controversiality. Tomorrow's art, if it is to be at all stirring, will no doubt be performed upon today's forbidden territory.

Whoever would know his day or would capture its essential character must maintain such a degree of detachment.

I think the term "self-expression" ought to be forbidden. It's finished. A person, if he has a gram of honesty, naturally does nothing but express himself. Self-expression is as much part of the artist as teeth are to the dentist; it is part of his life, his work.

I believe that there is no kind of experience which has not its potential visual dimension or its latent meanings for literary or other expression. Know all you can mathematics, physics, economies, and particularly history. As part of the whole education, the teaching of the university is therefore of profoundest value.

I think that one of the great virtues of the university lies in its being a community in the fullest sense of the word, a place of residence, and at the same time one of personal affirmation and intellectual rapport.

There are, roughly, about three conditions that seem to be basic in the artist's equipment: to be cultured, to be educated, and to be integrated.