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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
Determination
Degree
Critics
Degrees
Find
Work
Safeguard
Dullness
Fascinating

More quotes by 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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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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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.
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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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A painter with prestige among painters is bound to be discovered sooner or later.
Harold Rosenberg
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Abstract art as it is conceived at present is a game bequeathed to painting and sculpture by art history. One who accepts its premises must consent to limit his imagination to a depressing casuistry regarding the formal requirements of modernism.
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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An artist is a person who has invented an artist.
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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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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.
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Whoever undertakes to create soon finds himself engaged in creating himself.
Harold Rosenberg
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In reality, however, an artist is a product of art
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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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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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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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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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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The big moment came when it was decided to paint...Just To Paint. The gesture on the canvas was a gesture of liberation, from Value- political, aesthetic, moral.
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.
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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