“Form is the Shape of the Content” — Ben Shahn

“The Shape of Content”: (Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, 1956-57) by artist Ben Shahn was an important book in my life — if only because I took away just one little piece of wisdom, the answer to the question, What is form?  The form of something is, to put it simply, the shape of its content.  And the example I recall is … a tree … an individual tree … different from any other tree, taking the form of its own special, inner content … and what I took away was to not worry about the outer form of what I am writing, but, instead, to let the subject matter — the content — take its unique shape and become whatever it wants and demands to become.

So I have decided to get another copy of the book and will report back from its pages.  Meanwhile, one of the customers who reviewed it on Amazon has generously given us this excerpt … some of Shahn’s advice to artists on their education:ben-shahn

“Attend a university if you possibly can. There is no content of knowledge that is not pertinent to the work you will want to do. But before you attend a university work at something for a while. Do anything. Get a job in a potato field; or work as a grease-monkey in an auto repair shop. But if you do work in a field do not fail to observe the look and the feel of earth and of all things that you handle — yes, even potatoes! Or, in the auto shop, the smell of oil and grease and burning rubber. Paint of course, but if you have to lay aside painting for a time, continue to draw. Listen well to all conversations and be instructed by them and take all seriousness seriously. Never look down upon anything or anyone as not worthy of notice. In college or out of college, read. And form opinions! Read Sophocles and Euripides and Dante and Proust. Read everything that you can find about art except the reviews. Read the Bible; read Hume; read Pogo. Read all kinds of poetry and know many poets and many artists. Go to an art school, or two, or three, or take art courses at night if necessary. And paint and paint and draw and draw. Know all that you can, both curricular and non-curricular — mathematics and physics and economics, logic and particularly history. Know at least two languages besides your own, but anyway, know French. Look at pictures and more pictures. Look at every kind of visual symbol, every kind of emblem; do not spurn signboards of furniture drawings of this style of art or that style of art. Do not be afraid to like paintings honestly or to dislike them honestly, but if you do dislike them retain an open mind. Do not dismiss any school of art, not the Pre-Raphaelites nor the Hudson River School nor the German Genre painters. Talk and talk and sit at cafés, and listen to everything, to Brahms, to Brubeck, to the Italian hour on the radio. Listen to preachers in small town churches and in big city churches. Listen to politicians in New England town meetings and to rabble-rousers in Alabama. Even draw them. And remember that you are trying to learn to think what you want to think, that you are trying to co-ordinate mind and hand and eye. Go to all sorts of museums and galleries and to the studios of artists. Go to Paris and Madrid and Rome and Ravenna and Padua. Stand alone in Sainte Chapelle, in the Sistine Chapel, in the Church of the Carmine in Florence. Draw and draw and paint and learn to work in many media; try lithography and aquatint and silk-screen. Know all that you can about art, and by all means have opinions. Never be afraid to become embroiled in art or life or politics; never be afraid to learn to draw or paint better than you already do; and never be afraid to undertake any kind of art at all, however exalted or however common, but do it with distinction.”
Published in: on September 17, 2016 at 1:27 pm  Comments (4)  
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“Whether the Glass be Small or Large, Fill it Full”

water-glass

“Whether the glass be small or large, fill it full.”

This advice to artists of all kinds means the following to me, by way of analogy:

“If you take a thimble’s amount of water and pour it into a drinking glass, it won’t look so good.  (It’ll look even worse if you toss it into a bathtub.) But if you put the same thimble’s amount into a thimble, it suddenly looks perfect.”

Another way of saying it:

“If you don’t pour enough water into the glass, it doesn’t seem so good.  But if you pour in too much water, making it overflow, the result feels just as bad or maybe even worse.  Therefore, fill the glass … the vessel … the frame … with the right measure of contents.  Whatever the size, fill it up — no less, no more — and then your audience … your readers … your receivers … will feel satisfied.”

I think many of the best actors have the ability to make just the right gesture, use just the right tone … not too large or loud, not too small or soft, but somehow just right … following Hamlet’s advice to “Suit the action to the word, the word to the action…” (3.2)

Okay — I can already think of exceptions!  If it’s a rule, it’s a rule to be broken (although another good piece of wisdom, I’d say, is that you can’t break a rule until you know what that rule is and know how to obey it).

So, my thought is:

“Fill the glass full; and when you can do that well enough, okay, go ahead — break it if you will!”

Published in: on September 15, 2016 at 10:53 pm  Comments (1)  
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