Harold Rosenberg Quotations

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

Greatness in art is always a by-product.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.