Harold Rosenberg Quotes - Page 2

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• 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.

  Harold Rosenberg

  Creativity, Self, Creating

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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.

  Harold Rosenberg

  Art, Hymns, America

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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.

  Harold Rosenberg

  Struggle, Vocabulary, Profound

  "Art & Other Serious Matters" by Harold Rosenberg, University of Chicago Press, (p. 316), 1985.

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• In reality, however, an artist is a product of art

  Harold Rosenberg

  Art, Artist, Reality

  Harold Rosenberg (1983). “The De-Definition of Art”, p.13, University of Chicago Press

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• A painter with prestige among painters is bound to be discovered sooner or later.

  Harold Rosenberg

  Prestige, Fame, Painter

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• 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).

  Harold Rosenberg

  Struggle, Self, Numbers

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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.

  Harold Rosenberg

  Art, Believe, Subversion

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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.

  Harold Rosenberg

  Recognition, Reputation, Curator

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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.

  Harold Rosenberg

  America, Stories, Metamorphosis

  "The New Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations". Book by Robert Andrews, p. 1473, October 30, 2003.

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• The artist does not exist except as a personification, a figure of speech that represents the sum total of art itself. It is painting that is the genius of the painter, poetry of the poet, and a person is a creative artist to the extent that he participates in that genius.

  Harold Rosenberg

  Art, Creative, Doe

  Harold Rosenberg (1983). “The De-Definition of Art”, p.13, University of Chicago Press

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• Loiter in the neighborhood of a problem. After a while a solution strolls by.

  Harold Rosenberg

  Problem, Neighborhood, Solutions

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• What better way to prove that you understand a subject than to make money out of it?

  Harold Rosenberg

  Art, Money, Way

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• 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.

  Harold Rosenberg

  Artist, Self, Secret

  "Art and Other Serious Matters". Book by Harold Rosenberg. Chapter: "Being Outside", p. 271, 1985.

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• The artist is obliged to invent the self who will paint his pictures.

  Harold Rosenberg

  Artist, Self, Paint

  "Art & Other Serious Matters" by Harold Rosenberg, University of Chicago Press, (p. 191), 1985.

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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.

  Harold Rosenberg

  Time, Europe, History

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• Art has arrived at the paradox that tradition itself requires the occurrence of radical attacks on tradition.

  Harold Rosenberg

  Art, Tradition, Paradox

  Harold Rosenberg (1983). “Art on the Edge: Creators and Situations”, p.251, University of Chicago Press

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• The values to which the conservative appeals are inevitably caricatured by the individuals designated to put them into practice.

  Harold Rosenberg

  Practice, Conservative, Individual

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• 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

  Art, Past, Self

  Harold Rosenberg (1983). “Art on the Edge: Creators and Situations”, p.137, University of Chicago Press

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• Abandoned by philosophy, politics, and sociology, historical determinism continues to hold out in formalist art criticism.

  Harold Rosenberg

  Art, Philosophy, Historical

  "Art on the Edge: Creators and Situations". Book by Harold Rosenberg. Chapter: "Olitski, Kelly, Hamilton: Dogma and Talent", p. 62, 1975.

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• Form, color, composition, drawing, are auxiliaries, any one of which... can be dispensed with.

  Harold Rosenberg

  Color, Drawing, Form

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• No degree of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it fascinating.

  Harold Rosenberg

  Determination, Degrees, Critics

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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.

  Harold Rosenberg

  Art, Character, Movement

  "Art & Other Serious Matters" by Harold Rosenberg, University of Chicago Press, (p. 55), 1985.

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• 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

  Change, Stars, Past

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• In the United States, revolts tends to be directed against specific situations, rarely against the social structure as a whole.

  Harold Rosenberg

  United States, Social, Structure

  Harold Rosenberg (1983). “Art on the Edge: Creators and Situations”, p.256, University of Chicago Press

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• If being an anti-art artist is difficult, being an anti-art art historian is a hard position indeed. His doctrinal revolutionism brings forth nothing new in art but reenacts upheavals on the symbolic plane of language. It provides the consoling belief that overthrows are occurring as in the past, that barriers to creation are being surmounted, and that art is pursuing a radical purpose, even if it is only the purpose of doing away with itself.

  Harold Rosenberg

  Art, Past, Purpose

  "Art on the Edge". Book by Harold Rosenberg. Chapter: "What's New: Ritual Revolution", p. 260, 1975.

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