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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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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
Time
Kitsch
Follows
Established
Rules
Question
Artist
Art

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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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Both art and the artist lack identity and define themselves only through their encounter with each other.
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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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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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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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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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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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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 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 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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What better way to prove that you understand a subject than to make money out of it?
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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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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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Avant-gardism is an addiction that can be appeased only by a revolution in permanence.
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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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In reality, however, an artist is a product of art
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A painter with prestige among painters is bound to be discovered sooner or later.
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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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