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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 through apprehending, by means of present-day creations, how art is created, can the creations of other periods be genuinely appreciated.
Harold Rosenberg
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Imitation of the art of earlier centuries, as that done by Picasso and Modigliani , is carried on not to perpetuate ancient values but to demonstrate that new aesthetic orders now prevail.
Harold Rosenberg
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In reality, however, an artist is a product of art
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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Avant-gardism is an addiction that can be appeased only by a revolution in permanence.
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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Both art and the artist lack identity and define themselves only through their encounter with each other.
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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No dealer, curator, buyer or critic, or any existing combination of these, can be depended on to produce a reputation that is more than a momentary flurry.
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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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