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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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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
Success
Arrested
Stories
Fail
Become
Accept
America
Americans
Come
Failing
Metamorphoses
Accepting
Metamorphosis
Achieve
Resigned
Story
Halt

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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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Both art and the artist lack identity and define themselves only through their encounter with each other.
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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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In reality, however, an artist is a product of art
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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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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.
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Avant-gardism is an addiction that can be appeased only by a revolution in permanence.
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Loiter in the neighborhood of a problem. After a while a solution strolls by.
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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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No degree of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it fascinating.
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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.
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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.
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Whoever undertakes to create soon finds himself engaged in creating himself.
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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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Art has arrived at the paradox that tradition itself requires the occurrence of radical attacks on tradition.
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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.
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A painter with prestige among painters is bound to be discovered sooner or later.
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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.
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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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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.
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