Creativity Quote by Ben Shahn

There’s a sly humility in the way Shahn narrates his wartime résumé: not “photographic department,” not even “art,” but the bureaucratically vague “Special Skills.” The phrase sounds like an HR workaround, a catch-all category for talents that don’t fit neat institutional boxes. Shahn leans into that mismatch, letting the label do the satirical work. An artist known for moral clarity and social realism is filed under something that could just as easily describe a locksmith.

The list that follows - posters, pamphlets, murals - is plainspoken and rapid, like a production line. It’s not lyrical because the job wasn’t. He’s describing a world where images are deployed as tools, not treasures, and where creativity is conscripted into messaging. The casual tag, “propaganda in general, you know,” lands with an almost weary shrug: a recognition that the audience already understands the euphemism. “Propaganda” is the word institutions avoid, yet Shahn says it directly, then softens it with conversational ease, exposing how normalized persuasion becomes during crisis.

Context matters: Shahn’s career was shaped by the Depression-era fusion of art and public work - from New Deal commissions to politically engaged illustration. Here, he’s locating himself in that lineage, but also hinting at the moral tension inside it. The state needs artists, but it needs them as instruments. “Special Skills” becomes a backhanded portrait of modern power: it doesn’t suppress art; it repurposes it, assigns it a function, and calls it administrative.