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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
Art
Occurrence
Arrived
Attacks
Paradox
Radical
Requires
Tradition

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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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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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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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Only conservatives believe that subversion is still being carried on in the arts and that society is being shaken by it.
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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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A painter with prestige among painters is bound to be discovered sooner or later.
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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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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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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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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.
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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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What better way to prove that you understand a subject than to make money out of it?
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Whoever undertakes to create soon finds himself engaged in creating himself.
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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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No degree of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it fascinating.
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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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An artist is a person who has invented an artist.
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In the United States, revolts tends to be directed against specific situations, rarely against the social structure as a whole.
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In reality, however, an artist is a product of art
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