Harold Rosenberg
Harold Rosenberg
Harold Rosenbergwas an American writer, educator, philosopher and art critic. He coined the term Action Painting in 1952 for what was later to be known as abstract expressionism. Rosenberg is best known for his art criticism. Beginning in the early 1960s he became art Critic for the New Yorker magazine...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth2 February 1906
CountryUnited States of America
addiction revolution permanence
Avant-gardism is an addiction that can be appeased only by a revolution in permanence.
art practice silence
One of the grotesqueries of present-day American life is the amount of reasoning that goes into displaying the wisdom secreted in bad movies while proving that modern art is meaningless. They have put into practice the notion that a bad art work cleverly interpreted according to some obscure Method is more rewarding than a masterpiece wrapped in silence.
creating self engaged
Whoever undertakes to create soon finds himself engaged in creating himself.
change stars past
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.
determination degrees critics
No degree of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it fascinating.
practice conservative individual
The values to which the conservative appeals are inevitably caricatured by the individuals designated to put them into practice.
america stories metamorphosis
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.
struggle self numbers
Politics in the United States consists of the struggle between those whose change has been arrested by success or failure, on one side, and those who are still engaged in changing themselves, on the other. Agitators of arrested metamorphosis versus agitators of continued metamorphosis. The former have the advantage of numbers (since most people accept themselves as successes or failures quite early), the latter of vitality and visibility (since self-transformation, though it begins from within, with ideology, religion, drugs, tends to express itself publicly through costume and jargon).
depressing art games
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.
political gestures moral
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.
art lying differences
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.
art order conformity
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.
art broken painting
The new painting has broken down every distinction between art and life.
art determination memories
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.