Ben Shahn Quotes

As an artist, I want to interpret my feelings

What I wish to show when I paint is the way I see things with my eyes and in my heart.

There's no wrong way of doing art. It's an expression of the individual.

Love is art, not truth. It’s like painting scenery.

Not what man knows but what man feels, concerns art. All else is science.

Art is about emotion; if art needs to be explained it is no longer art.

I want to express my feelings rather than illustrate them.

What has reason to do with the art of painting?

I thought for a long time that within art, that you would come up with an idea, you would labor over it intensely until you felt like it was done, and then when you finished it, that was the final stage. I started to realize that that's not actually the completion of it. The final stage of any kind of art is to really lose control over it and let it affect other people. You can't control the effect that it has on people, but you hope that it has some sort of reaction. You just hope that they're not indifferent to it, you wanna make people feel something, whether it's love or hate.

Why not spend that time on art: painting, sculpting, charcoal, pastel, oils? Are words or numbers more important than images? Who decides this? Does algebra move you to tears? Can plural possessives express the feelings in your heart? If you don't learn art now, you will never learn to breathe!

Poetry, she thought, wasn't written to be analyzed; it was meant to inspire without reason, to touch without understanding.

All art is based on non-conformity.

A work of art may be understood as a conductor from the artist's mind to the viewer's. But it may never reach the viewer, or it may never leave the artist's mind.

Poems aren't postcards to send home.

One reason I was interested in photography was to get away from the preciousness of the art object.

Art must not be intelligent; art is a jouisance, an enjoyment

To contradict, even in little matters, is the supreme necessity of art today.

Goddamn it, FEELING is what I like in art, not CRAFTINESS and the hiding of feelings.

It's sometimes hard to talk about politics and art. Obviously, I have my core beliefs, but I think art is best when it's troublesome and pushes against stuff.

Abstraction means getting away from a visual interpretation but nearer to an emotional one.

Abstract art was the quivalent of poetic expression; I didn’t need to use words,but colors and lines. I didn’t need to belong to a language-oriented culture but to an open form of expression.

True art lies in a reality that is felt.

The painter makes real to others his innermost feelings about all that he cares for. A secret becomes known to everyone who views the picture through the intensity with which it is felt.

There is no progress in art, any more than there is progress in making love.

One may do whatever one likes. In art, the only thing is, to make sure that one does like it.