Harold Rosenberg quotes

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)
Both art and the artist lack identity and define themselves only through their encounter with each other. View quote
Harold Rosenberg
The differences between revolution in art and revolution in politics are enormous. Revolution in art lies not in the will to destroy but in the revelation of what has already been destroyed. Art kills only the dead. View quote
Harold Rosenberg
The current demoralization of the art world is attributable at least in part to museum interference, ideological and practical, with ongoing creation in art. View quote
Harold Rosenberg
Only through apprehending, by means of present-day creations, how art is created, can the creations of other periods be genuinely appreciated. View quote
Harold Rosenberg
It is not logical for art to be logical. Art goes against the grain of the times as readily as it goes with it and at the very same moment. Instead of seeking the nearest exit, art responds to a new situation by uncovering a labyrinth of problems. View quote
Harold Rosenberg
Whoever undertakes to create soon finds himself engaged in creating himself. View quote
Harold Rosenberg
Greatness in art is always a by-product. View quote
Harold Rosenberg
The struggle to make an absolute statement in an individually conceived vocabulary accounts for the profound tensions inherent in the best modern work. View quote
Harold Rosenberg
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. View quote
Harold Rosenberg
America is the civilization of people engaged in transforming themselves. In the past, the stars of the performance were the pioneer and the immigrant. Today, it is youth and the Black. (Harold Rosenberg)
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. View quote
Harold Rosenberg
Abandoned by philosophy, politics, and sociology, historical determinism continues to hold out in formalist art criticism. View quote
Harold Rosenberg
Art has arrived at the paradox that tradition itself requires the occurrence of radical attacks on tradition. View quote
Harold Rosenberg
What better way to prove that you understand a subject than to make money out of it? View quote
Harold Rosenberg
The artist is obliged to invent the self who will paint his pictures. View quote
Harold Rosenberg
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. View quote
Harold Rosenberg
The skills of the modern artist are the opposite of those of the craftsman: instead of acquiring techniques for producing classes of objects, the artist today perfects the means suited to his particular work. View quote
Harold Rosenberg
In the United States, revolts tends to be directed against specific situations, rarely against the social structure as a whole. View quote
Harold Rosenberg
No degree of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it fascinating. View quote
Harold Rosenberg
The internationalization of art becomes a factor contributing to the estrangement of art from the artist. The sum of works of all times and places stands against him as an entity with objectives and values of its own. In turn, since becoming aware of the organized body of artworks as the obstacle to his own aesthetic self-affirmation, the artist is pushed toward anti-intellectualism and willful dismissal of the art of the past. (Harold Rosenberg)
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. View quote
Harold Rosenberg
Exhibitions of minority art are often intended to make the minority itself more aware of its collective experience. Reinforcing the common memory of miseries and triumphs will, it is expected, strengthen the unity of the group and its determination to achieve a better future. But emphasizing shared experience as opposed to the artist's consciousness of self (which includes his personal and unshared experience of masterpieces) brings to the fore the tension in the individual artist between being an artist and being a minority artist. View quote
Harold Rosenberg
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. View quote
Harold Rosenberg
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. View quote
Harold Rosenberg