Ben Shahn Quotes

An artist might be attracted to hedonism, but of course an artist is not a hedonist. He's a worker, always.

I was always an artist. I was a broker to earn a living, but I was always thinking about my art.

I always find it fascinating to ask people, why they've chosen to live their life as an artist? Why be an actor, a singer, an author, a filmmaker? I've heard such inspiring answers to that question.

I wanted to be an artist, because it's a much better scam than being an architect.

It is not from choice that my life is music and nothing more, but when one is an artist what else can he be? When a whole lifetime is too short to attain the heights he wants to reach, how then can he devote any of the little time he has to things outside of his art?

Being an artist is a lifestyle.

It is not right for painters to think that painting is like prostitution, that 'first you do it for love, then you do it for others, and finally you do it for money.

Being an artist is a job for life.

Art is a vocation, as much as anything in this world. For the real artist, it is the most natural thing in the world, not as necessary as air and water, perhaps, but as food and water. But we really do lead almost a monastic life, you know; to follow it you very often have to give up something.

It's a very obsessive profession that you need to stay obsessed to get anywhere, and it's very easy for us to get obsessed and then nothing else matters. I was reading Somerset Maugham's novella, Moon and Sixpense, about this artist based on Gauguin's life. It was so beautifully written. You must be first rate because second rate you might not survive. If you're an accountant, you'll survive second rate. If you chance it big, you may not get anywhere.

I am a great artist and I know it. It's because of what I am that I have endured so much suffering, so as to pursue my vocation, otherwise I would consider myself a rogue - which is what many people think I am, for that matter.

I have seen no men in life loving their profession so much as painters, except, perhaps, actors, who, when not engaged themselves, always go to the play.

The person who practices an art is an artist, not a samurai, and one should have the intention of being called a samurai.

I don't think you have to earn your income as an artist to be an artist. But if you are an artist, then art is what you do, whether or not you're paid for doing it; it is what you do, not what you are. I regard artist not as a description of temperament but as a category of profession, of vocation.

An artist who dedicates his life to art, burdens his art with his life, and his life with his art.

There's no retirement for an artist,its your way of living so theres no end to it.

Is art really the priesthood that demands the pure in heart who belong to it wholly?

If it is the mark of the artist to love art before everything, to renounce everything for its sake, to think all the sweet human things of life well lost if only he may attain something, do some good, great work - then I was never an artist.

Only 10 percent of people who go to art school will still be making art in 10 years. To some extent, you have to want to do it. It's hard. It is something you really have to stick with for it to work.

No one can be a painter unless he cares for painting above all else.

I never thought about doing anything other than making art.

By the time I was a teenager, I knew I wanted to be an artist. I was a born draftsman and liked all forms of art, so I just knew that's what I wanted to do.

There were a lot of choices to make and I always picked artist. I never once picked doctor, lawyer, firemen or something like that. It was always artist.

I've never said, 'I live for art.'

I always knew that I was an artist. I never expected to be able to make a living.