Creativity Quote by Ben Shahn

There is a stubborn, almost defiant simplicity to Shahn's claim of total involvement: it reads less like a motivational slogan than a working-class ethic turned aesthetic stance. Shahn came up in the immigrant, labor-scarred America of the early 20th century, and his art never fully accepted the modernist fantasy of the artist as detached formalist. "Totally involved" is his rebuttal to that posture. He is telling you that attention is moral, not just technical.

The throwaway tag "you see" matters. It’s conversational, a little insistent, like he’s correcting someone who expects an artist to be airy or neutral. Shahn’s career was defined by choosing sides: Social Realist painting, the Sacco and Vanzetti series, New Deal-era documentary work, anti-fascist posters, later a broader humanist concern. In that context, involvement is not a personality trait; it’s a refusal to outsource responsibility. He’s signaling that the studio is not an alibi.

Subtext: art, for Shahn, is a form of witness. "Whatever I get involved in" is expansive - politics, design, photography, murals, typography - but the point is the same. He rejects dabbling. He also rejects the era’s creeping professionalization where art becomes a niche expertise sealed off from civic life. Total involvement is a way of staying porous to the world’s injuries, and of admitting that making images is never only about images.