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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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Harold Rosenberg
Age: 72 †
Born: 1906
Born: February 2
Died: 1978
Died: July 11
Art Critic
Art Historian
Journalist
Philosopher
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Writer
New York City
New York
Society
Selling
Clinging
Artist
Standards
Conservatives
Art
Cause
Advanced
Stills
Longer
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Carried
Subversion
Today
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Imperative
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Imperatives

More quotes by 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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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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Art has arrived at the paradox that tradition itself requires the occurrence of radical attacks on tradition.
Harold Rosenberg
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An artist is a person who has invented an artist.
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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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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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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In reality, however, an artist is a product of art
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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What better way to prove that you understand a subject than to make money out of it?
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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No degree of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it fascinating.
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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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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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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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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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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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