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it is always in the future that the course of art lies

— Ben Shahn Charles Eliot Norton Lectures (1956)

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Art

More quotes by Ben Shahn

Conformity is a mood and an atmosphere, a failure of hope or belief or rebellion.

Charles Eliot Norton Lectures (1956)

Every artist would like to communicate, but often he fails to ask himself with whom he is trying to do it.

Conversation about "The Image (1962)

I think that it can be said with certainty that the form which does emerge cannot be greater than the content which went into it. For form is only the manifestation, the shape of content.

Charles Eliot Norton Lectures (1956)

Whoever would know his day or would capture its essential character must maintain such a degree of detachment.

Charles Eliot Norton Lectures (1956)

There are, roughly, about three conditions that seem to be basic in the artist's equipment: to be cultured, to be educated, and to be integrated.

Charles Eliot Norton Lectures (1956)

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All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

Albert Einstein Moral Decay (1937)

The great artists are the ones who dare to entitle to beauty things so natural that when they're seen afterward, people say: Why did I never realize before that this too was beautiful?

André Gide The Immoralist (1902)

A genuine work of art must mean many things; the truer its art, the more things it will mean.

George MacDonald The Fantastic Imagination (1893)

Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness.

José Ortega y Gasset The Dehumanization of Art and Ideas about the Novel (1925)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Ben Shahn (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.