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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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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
Accepting
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Game
Depressing
Bequeathed
Present
Consent
Modernism
Imagination
Formal
Accepts
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Premises
History
Abstract
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Art
Limits
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Must
Painting
Sculpture

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