Editing Quote by 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 even as…

— Ben Shahn

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

— Ben Shahn

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

— 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 flouts all…

— 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 for their…

— Ben Shahn

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

— Ben Shahn