Ben Shahn

Artist

1898-09-12 – 1969-03-14

Ben Shahn was an American artist known for social realist painting, murals, photography, and graphic art. His work frequently addressed labor, civil rights, and social justice themes.

Quotes by Ben Shahn

Who knows when a trenchant line becomes a human face?
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Who knows when a trenchant line becomes a human face?
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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.
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It's a little bit like my inability to read a guide book before I go anywhere. I can read it after I've been there and by the same logic I refuse to accept any technical stunts from anybody. I refused to learn more than I knew and I confess I missed a great deal.
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An amateur is someone who supports himself with outside jobs which enable him to paint. A professional is someone whose wife works to enable him to paint.
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It used to be twelve people crowded around a sewing table; now it's ten.
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All art is based on non-conformity.
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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.
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