Ben Shahn ad After Titian / The Shape of Content
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The document discusses Ben Shahn and his artistic process. It describes Shahn as a shy yet fiercely communicative artist who was prolific in his work. While he was hard on himself and his own abilities, he was also very critical in his analysis of other artists' work. However, he would then profusely apologize for his criticism, worried that others would hate him for his comments. The document provides insight into Shahn's contradictory nature as both a prolific creator but also a harsh self-critic and critic of other artists.
Ben Shahn ad After Titian / The Shape of Content
- 1. Ben Shahn and After Titian Plus things I took to heart from The Shape of Content.
- 3. Ecclesiastes. Serigraph in sepia with black calligraphy, 1966.
- 4. From, Once, Dice Trice, a children’s book written by Alastair Reid in 1958.
- 16. “The inner critic” “I have never met a literary critic of painting who, whatever his sentiments towards the artist, would actually destroy an existing painting. He would regard such an act as vandalism and would never consider it. But the critic within the artist is a ruthless destroyer. He continually rejects the contradictory elements within a painting, the colors that do not act upon other colors and would thus constitute dead places within his work; he rejects insufficient drawing; he rejects forms and colors incompatible with the intention or mood of the piece; he rejects intention itself and mood itself often as banal or derivative. He mightily applauds the good piece of work; he cheers the successful passage; but then if the painting does not come up to his standards he casts aside everything and obliterates the whole.“
- 17. “It is my art, but is it my own art?”
- 18. “I believe if it were left to artists to choose their own labels most would choose none.”
- 19. “...I am generally distrustful of contrived situations, that is, situations peculiarly set up to favor the blossoming of art.”
- 21. “There are many kinds of security and one kind lies in the knowledge that one is dedicating his hours and days to the things that he considers the most important.”
- 22. “If a painting is to be at all interesting it is the very absence of a formula that will make it so.”
- 26. Definition of an artist. “He was the most astonishing contradiction of components I’d ever encountered. Shy yet fiercely communicative when putting an idea into your head. Vocally astringent regarding his own abilities but not to the point that he couldn’t produce—he was as prolific an artist (yes, an artist, and I never use the term, especially regarding people I like) I’ve ever seen. But I could feel it. Everything he sketched, penciled, inked, made—was a payment, one he could scarcely afford; as if it physically hurt him to put pencil to paper. Yet that only seemed to spur him on, to live far beyond his means. He was unable not to. For Sketch, to draw was to breath, and so the air became lead—silvery in the right light, dark soot in the wrong; heavy, slick and malleable—into shapes he brought together in glorious orchestration, with a child’s eye and a rocket scientist’s precision, all fortified by a furious melancholy, a quiet engine of sourceless shame and humility. When it came to another’s work, he longed to praise it but then couldn’t resist critiquing it all within an inch of its life, analyzing deficiencies with uncontrollable abandon and laser accuracy. He was sharp as his Radio 914 pen nibs, and as pointed. And then he’d apologize. Oh, he would apologize: Oh my GOD, forgive me, please don’t hate me, I’m SORRY, don’t listen to me, why am I saying things, what do I know, I don’t know anything, why do you listen to me you should just tell me to shut UP, I’m awful, forgive me, you hate me, don’t you? Tell the truth. Please don’t hate me. Please don’t. Please.”