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No degree of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it fascinating.

Harold Rosenberg

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Harold Rosenberg
Age: 72 †
Born: 1906
Born: February 2
Died: 1978
Died: July 11
Art Critic
Art Historian
Journalist
Philosopher
Teacher
Writer
New York City
New York
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Fascinating
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More quotes by Harold Rosenberg

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The struggle to make an absolute statement in an individually conceived vocabulary accounts for the profound tensions inherent in the best modern work.
Harold Rosenberg
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Loiter in the neighborhood of a problem. After a while a solution strolls by.
Harold Rosenberg
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At a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena in which to act-rather than as a space in which to reproduce, re-design, analyze or express an object, actual or imagined. What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event.
Harold Rosenberg
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Avant-gardism is an addiction that can be appeased only by a revolution in permanence.
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Not only were the minds of artists formed by the university in the same mold were formed those of the art historians, the critics, the curators, and the collectors by whom their work was evaluated. With the rise of Conceptual art, the classroom announced its final triumph over the studio.
Harold Rosenberg
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Kitsch is the daily art of our time, as the vase or the hymn was for earlier generations. For the sensibility it has that arbitrariness and importance which works take on when they are no longer noticeable elements of the environment. In America kitsch is Nature. The Rocky Mountains have resembled fake art for a century.
Harold Rosenberg
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Only conservatives believe that subversion is still being carried on in the arts and that society is being shaken by it. Advanced art today is no longer a cause -it contains no moral imperative. There is no virtue in clinging to principles and standards, no vice in selling or in selling out.
Harold Rosenberg
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Whoever undertakes to create soon finds himself engaged in creating himself.
Harold Rosenberg
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For the artist, fulfillment of self consists not in marching in the ranks of the liberators but in being entered in the roll of the Masters. The artist tends to find himself in the position of a deserter from his social group or, at best, one who collaborates, with secret reservations.
Harold Rosenberg
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In the United States, revolts tends to be directed against specific situations, rarely against the social structure as a whole.
Harold Rosenberg
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Co-operating critics comb the studios like big-league scouts, prepared to spot the art of the future and to take lead in establishing reputations. Art historians stand by ready with cameras and notebooks to make sure every novel detail is safe for the record. The tradition of the new has reduced all other traditions to triviality.
Harold Rosenberg
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The artist does not exist except as a personification, a figure of speech that represents the sum total of art itself. It is painting that is the genius of the painter, poetry of the poet, and a person is a creative artist to the extent that he participates in that genius.
Harold Rosenberg
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Both art and the artist lack identity and define themselves only through their encounter with each other.
Harold Rosenberg
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Kitsch is art that follows established rules in a time when all rules in art are put into question by each artist.
Harold Rosenberg
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In reality, however, an artist is a product of art
Harold Rosenberg
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The aim of every authentic artist is not to conform to the history of art, but to release himself from it in order to replace it with his own history.
Harold Rosenberg
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Only conservatives believe that subversion is still being carried on in the arts and that society is being shaken by it.
Harold Rosenberg
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What better way to prove that you understand a subject than to make money out of it?
Harold Rosenberg
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The story of Americans is the story of arrested metamorphoses. Those who achieve success come to a halt and accept themselves as they are. Those who fail become resigned and accept themselves as they are.
Harold Rosenberg
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American time has stretched around the world. It has become the dominant tempo of modern history, especially of the history of Europe.
Harold Rosenberg