In Ben Shahn’s The Shape of Content, there is an essay called the “Biography of a Painting.” In this essay Shahn writes about his personal pilgrimage toward expressing his true inner self in his paintings. He wrote of finding his early “academic” work (landscapes, portraits, and studies) competent but devoid of self. He realized that he must discover who he truly was before he could make the kind of art that coincides with that type of person. Part of this process of discovery is developing a working relationship with one’s inner critic:
“An artist at work upon a painting must be two people, not one. He must function and act as two people all the time and in several ways. On the one hand, the artist is the imaginer and the producer. But he is also the critic, and here is a critic of such inexorable standards as to have made McBride [a conservative anti-communist art critic] seem liberal even in his most illiberal moment.”
Shahn continues, describing the role of the inner critic as one of the obstruction to the creative progress but also as a governor of content:
“So the inner critic has stopped the painting before it has even begun. Then, when the artist strips his idea down to emotional images alone and begins, slowly, falteringly, moving toward some realization, that critic is constantly objecting, constantly chiding, holding the hand back to the image alone, so that the painting remains only that, so that it does not split into two things, one the image, and another, the meaning.”
What I have taken from this is that it is not enough that an artist have skill with material and technique. It is necessary that the artist be able to develop the image and its meaning simultaneously. The meaning of the painting must be an expression of self or deeply connected to the artist’s way of thinking. The image is a physical manifestation of the thought process from idea to the object or work of art.
Shahn continues to describe the connection between personal thoughts and beliefs and the work:
“It became uncomfortably apparent to me that whatever one thinks as well as whatever one paints must be constantly reexamined, torn apart, if that seems to be indicated, and reassembled in the light of new attitudes or new discovery. If one has set for himself the position that his painting shall not misconstru his personal mode of thinking, then he must be rather unusually alert to just what he does think.”
In the ideas that I am turning into images I wonder what of them is a reflection of my beliefs? My images need to contain more of my self. To date my images have been mine because I made them. Often they reflect only my skill with tools and materials. I have been content with that but now I want more.
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