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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
Dullness
Fascinating
Determination
Degree
Critics
Degrees
Find
Work
Safeguard

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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In reality, however, an artist is a product of art
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An artist is a person who has invented an artist.
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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.
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Art has arrived at the paradox that tradition itself requires the occurrence of radical attacks on tradition.
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
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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.
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A painter with prestige among painters is bound to be discovered sooner or later.
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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.
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Only through apprehending, by means of present-day creations, how art is created, can the creations of other periods be genuinely appreciated.
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Avant-gardism is an addiction that can be appeased only by a revolution in permanence.
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.
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Whoever undertakes to create soon finds himself engaged in creating himself.
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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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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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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How much the work of an artist owes to an art movement to which he belongs can never be determined exactly, if only because the movement derives its character from the individual creations of its members.
Harold Rosenberg
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Loiter in the neighborhood of a problem. After a while a solution strolls by.
Harold Rosenberg