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.

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.

The purpose of education is to keep a culture from being drowned in senseless repetitions, each of which claims to offer a new insight.

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.

An artist is a person who has invented an artist.

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.

A painting that is an act is inseparable from the biography of the artist.

Both art and the artist lack identity and define themselves only through their encounter with each other.

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.

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.

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.

Kitsch is art that follows established rules in a time when all rules in art are put into question by each artist.

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.

Today, each artist must undertake to invent himself, a lifelong act of creation that constitutes the essential content of the artist's work.

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.

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.

The new painting has broken down every distinction between art and life.

Whoever undertakes to create soon finds himself engaged in creating himself.

Only through apprehending, by means of present-day creations, how art is created, can the creations of other periods be genuinely appreciated.

The current demoralization of the art world is attributable at least in part to museum interference, ideological and practical, with ongoing creation in art.

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.

Avant-gardism is an addiction that can be appeased only by a revolution in permanence.

Greatness in art is always a by-product.

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.

Whoever undertakes to create soon finds himself engaged in creating himself. Self-transformation and the transformation of others have constituted the radical interest of our century, whether in painting, psychiatry, or political action.