Harold Rosenberg
Overview
 
Harold Rosenberg was an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 writer, educator, philosopher and art critic
Art critic
An art critic is a person who specializes in evaluating art. Their written critiques, or reviews, are published in newspapers, magazines, books and on web sites...

. He coined the term Action Painting
Action painting
Action painting sometimes called "gestural abstraction", is a style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied...

 in 1952 for what was later to be known as abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...

. The term was first employed in Rosenberg's essay "American Action Painters" published in the December 1952 issue of ARTnews. The essay was reprinted in Rosenberg's book The Tradition of the New in 1959. The title is itself ambiguous as it both refers to American Action Painters and American Action Painters and reveals Rosenberg's political agenda which consisted in crediting US as the center of international culture after World War II and action painting
Action painting
Action painting sometimes called "gestural abstraction", is a style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied...

 as the most relevant of its cultural forms. This theme was already developed in a previous article "The Fall of Paris" published in Partisan Review
Partisan Review
Partisan Review was an American political and literary quarterly published from 1934 to 2003, though it suspended publication between October 1936 and December 1937.-Overview:...

in 1940.

Rosenberg was born in Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

, educated at City College of New York and received a law degree from St.
Quotations

As with other modern artists, his readings provided not an organized outlook but a kind of metaphysical hum that surrounded his mental operations.

"Barnett Newman|Newman: Meaning in Abstract Art II" (p. 58)

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

"Jules Olitski|Olitski, Ellsworth Kelly|Kelly, Richard Hamilton|Hamliton: Dogma and Talent" (p. 62)

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. However the historical pattern is drawn, it will not fit the developing sensibility of the individual.

"Olitski, Kelly, Hamilton: Dogma and Talent" (pp. 64-65)

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.

"Lester Johnson's Abstract Men" (p. 71)

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

"Criticism and Its Premises" (p. 136)

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.

"Criticism and Its Premises" (p. 137)

Imitation of the art of earlier centuries, as that done by Pablo Picasso|Picasso and Amedeo Modigliani|Modigliani, is carried on not to perpetuate ancient values but to demonstrate that new aesthetic orders now prevail.

"Criticism and Its Premises" (p. 138)

 
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