The Education of an Artist

Ben Shahn
Ben Shahn (September 12, 1898 – March 14, 1969) was a Lithuanian-born American artist.

The Shape of Content, The Education of an Artist

Shahn had a prolific career as a graphic artist. He was an illustrator for CBS television and for such national magazines as Esquire, Harper’s, and Time. He also returned to his Jewish roots by creating mosaic murals for several synagogues. All the while, the pursuit of justice through art remained his main concern…. Teaching was also important to Shahn and while at Harvard University for the 1956-57 academic year, he presented six lectures on art, which were later published as The Shape of Content (1957); impressively, the book remains in print and provides much insight into his artistic beliefs and practices, and the life of an artist.

–The Art Story website [Ben Shahn, American Artist].

Ben Shahn on Being Integrated, Cultured, and Educated

Being integrated, in the dictionary sense, means being unified. I think of it as being a little more dynamic–educationally, for instance, being organically interacting. In either sense, integration implies involvement of the whole person, not just selected parts of him; integration, for instance, of kinds of knowledge (history comes to life in the art of any period); integration of knowledge with thinking–and that means holding opinions; and then integration within the whole personality–and that implies holding some unified philosophical view, an attitude toward life. And then there must be the uniting of this personality, this view, with the creative capacities of the person so that his acts and his works and his thinking and his knowledge will be a unity. Such a state of being, curiously enough, invokes the word integrity in its basic sense: being unified, being integrated….

All such probing and testing of reality and creating of new realities may result from different kinds of educational focus, different kinds of content, but they always require the three basic capacities: first, of perceptiveness, a recognition of values, a certain kind of culture, second, a capacity for the vast accumulation of knowledge, and third, a capacity to integrate all this material into creative acts and images. The future of art assuredly rests in education-not just one kind of education but many kinds.

–Ben Shahn [The Shape of Content, The Education of an Artist] pp. 116-117, 121.

On Craft

Craft itself, once an inexorable standard in art, is today an artist’s individual responsibility. Craft probably still does involve deftness of touch, ease of execution–in other words, mastery. But it is the mastery of one’s personal means. And while it would be hard to imagine any serious practitioner in art not seeking craft and mastery and deftness, still it is to be emphasized that such mastery is today not measured by a set, established style, but only by a private sense of perfection. (Paint and paint, and draw and draw.)
I have mentioned our great American passion for freedom. And now, let me add to that the comment that freedom itself is a disciplined thing. Craft is that discipline which frees the spirit; and style is the result. I think of dancers upon a stage. Some will have perfected their craft to a higher degree than others. Those who appear relatively more hampered and leaden in their movements are those of lesser craft. Those who appear unimpeded, completely free in all their movements, are so because they have brought craft to such a degree of perfection. The perceptive eye may discern the craft in many varieties of art. The non-perceptive eye probably seeks to impose one standard of craft upon all kinds of art.

–Ben Shahn [The Shape of Content, The Education of an Artist] pp. 123-125.