The Philosopher
Harold Rosenberg
The face
The background
- Nationality:
- American
- Schools:
- Marxism
- Branchs:
- Art criticism, Philosophy, Social thought
- Period:
- 20th century
The synopsis
Harold Rosenberg was born on February 2, 1906, in Brooklyn, New York. He studied at the City College of New York and received his LL.B. from Brooklyn Law School. He embraced a bohemian lifestyle after contracting osteomyelitis, which required him to use a cane. Throughout the 1930s, Rosenberg was a Marxist and contributed to various publications. During World War II, he worked for the Office of War Information and later as a consultant for the Treasury Department. From 1946 to 1973, he served as a program consultant for the Ad Council. He held various lectureships and visiting appointments before becoming a professor of social thought at the University of Chicago in 1966. Rosenberg died on July 11, 1978, in Springs, New York, from complications of a stroke and pneumonia. He is known for coining the term "Action Painting" in 1952 and was the art critic for *The New Yorker* from 1962 until his death. His writings explored art theory, Marxism, and the independence of artists.
The works
Trance Above the Streets
The Tradition of the New
Arshile Gorky: The Man, the Time, the Idea
The Anxious Object
Artworks and Packages
Act and the Actor
The De-definition of Art
Discovering the Present
Art on the Edge
The Case of the Baffled Radical
Art and Other Serious Matters
The American Action Painters
"The Bird for Every Bird"
The quotes
No degree of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it fascinating.
The values to which the conservative appeals are inevitably caricatured by the individuals designated to put them into practice.
American time has stretched around the world. It has become the dominant tempo of modern history, especially of the history of Europe.
What better way to prove that you understand a subject than to make money out of it?
Whoever undertakes to create soon finds himself engaged in creating himself.
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.
They had enough. They wanted to enjoy their life.
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.
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.
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.