Ben Shahn

I became interested in photography when I was sharing a studio with Walker Evans, and found my own sketching was inadequate.

— Ben Shahn

It is an intimately communicative affair between the painter and his painting, a conversation back and forth, the painting telling the painter…

— Ben Shahn

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

— Ben Shahn

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

— Ben Shahn

The artist is likely to be looked upon with some uneasiness by the more conservative members of society.

— Ben Shahn

Only an individual can imagine, invent, or create. The whole audience of art is an audience of individuals.

— Ben Shahn

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

— Ben Shahn

The natural reaction of the artist will be strongly towards bringing man back into focus as the center of importance.

— Ben Shahn

Each artist comes to the painting or sculpture because there he can be told that he, the individual, transcends all classes and…

— Ben Shahn

All art is based on non-conformity.

— Ben Shahn

I was primarily interested in people, and people in action, so that I did nothing photographically in the sense of doing buildings…

— Ben Shahn

I remember traveling around in Arkansas with Senator Robinson, and I told him what this little trick was. He felt very much…

— Ben Shahn

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

— Ben Shahn

We tried to present the ordinary in an extraordinary manner. But that's the paradox because the only thing extraordinary about it was…

— Ben Shahn

Being an artist is not only what you do, but how you live your life.

— Ben Shahn

The values that reside in art are anarchic, they are every man's loves and hates and his momentary divine revelation.

— Ben Shahn

It is the mission of art to remind man from time to time that he is human, and the time is ripe,…

— Ben Shahn

I felt very strongly the whole social impact of that depression, you know, and I felt very strongly about the efforts that…

— Ben Shahn

All art is based on nonconformity ... Without nonconformity we would have had no Bill of Rights or Magna Carta, no public…

— Ben Shahn

I've been asked a great deal about the influence I've had with my work and it's impossible to say, you know.

— Ben Shahn

The apprehension of... values is intuitive; but it is not a built-in intuition, not something with which one is born. Intuition in…

— Ben Shahn

Now, when I came on to Washington to begin my job, I was so interested in photography at that time that I…

— Ben Shahn

So, I was offered this job to come down there but first it was suggested that I take a trip around the…

— Ben Shahn

Of course I realize that photography is not the technical facility as much as it is the eye, and this decision that…

— Ben Shahn

I've been asked often what is the difference between an amateur and a professional artist, and I will tell you. An amateur…

— Ben Shahn