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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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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
Occurrence
Arrived
Attacks
Paradox
Radical
Requires
Tradition
Art

More quotes by Harold Rosenberg

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An artist is a person who has invented an artist.
Harold Rosenberg
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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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Loiter in the neighborhood of a problem. After a while a solution strolls by.
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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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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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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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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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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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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.
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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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A painter with prestige among painters is bound to be discovered sooner or later.
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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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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Both art and the artist lack identity and define themselves only through their encounter with each other.
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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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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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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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