“One cannot, however, avoid saying a few words about individuals who lay down the law to art in the name of art history. Art criticism today is beset by art historians turned inside out to function as prophets of so-called inevitable trends. A determinism similar to that projected into the evolution of past styles is clamped upon art in the making. In this parody of art history, value judgments are deduced from a presumed logic of development, and an ultimatum is issued to artists either to accommodate themselves to these values or be banned from the art of the future.”

—  Harold Rosenberg

Source: Art on the Edge, (1975), p. 147, "Criticism and Its Premises"

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "One cannot, however, avoid saying a few words about individuals who lay down the law to art in the name of art history.…" by Harold Rosenberg?
Harold Rosenberg photo
Harold Rosenberg29
American writer and art critic 1906–1978

Related quotes

“The new attitude of the critic toward the artist has been rationalized for me by a leading European art historian who is also an influential critic of current art. It is based on a theory of division of labor in making art history. The historian, he contends, knows art history and, in fact, creates it; the artist knows only how to do things. Left to himself, the artist is almost certain to do the wrong thing — to deviate from the line of art history and thus to plunge into oblivion. The critic's role is to steer him in the proper direction and advise changes in his technique and subject matter that will coordinate his efforts with the forces of development. Better still, critics should formulate historically valid projects for artists to carry out. That not all critics have the same expectations of the future of art does not, I realize, weaken the cogency of my colleague's argument. The surviving artist would be one who has been lucky enough to pick the winning critic. My own view that art should be left to artists seemed to my mentor both out-of-date and irresponsible.”

Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978) American writer and art critic

Source: Art on the Edge, (1975), p. 249, "Thoughts in Off-Season"

“The notion of style has long been the art historian's principal mode of classifying works of art. By style he selects and shapes the history of art.”

George Kubler (1912–1996) American art historian

George Kubler summarizing the view of Meyer Schapiro (with whom he disagrees), quoted by Alpers in Lang, Berel (ed.), The Concept of Style, 1987, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, ISBN 0801494397

Gustave Courbet photo

“I cannot teach my art, nor the art of any school whatever, since I deny that art can be taught, or, in other words, I maintain that art is completely individual, and is, for each artist, nothing but the talent issuing from his own inspiration and his own studies of tradition.”

Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) French painter

1860s, Realist Manifesto' - an open letter, 1861

Joseph Kosuth photo

“It is necessary to separate aesthetics from art because aesthetics deals with opinions on perception of the world in general. In the past one of the two prongs of art’s function was its value as decoration. So any branch of philosophy that dealt with “beauty” and thus, taste, was inevitably duty bound to discuss art as well. Out of this “habit” grew the notion that there was a conceptual connection between art and aesthetics, which is not true. This idea never drastically conflicted with artistic considerations before recent times, not only because the morphological characteristics of art perpetuated the continuity of this error, but as well, because the apparent other “functions” of art (depiction of religious themes, portraiture of aristocrats, detailing of architecture, etc.) used art to cover up art.”

Joseph Kosuth (1945) American conceptual artist

Art after Philosophy, 1969

Ayn Rand photo

“Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's individual value-judgments.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Romantic Manifesto (1969), Chapter 1 ("The Psycho-Epistemology of Art")
Source: The Fountainhead

“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.”

Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978) American writer and art critic

Source: Art on the Edge, (1975), pp. 64-65, "Olitski, Kelly, Hamilton: Dogma and Talent"

Kurt Schwitters photo

“Well, art is not communist -- not bourgeois either
It's no club and has no party line
Not wild nights make an artist -- not drugs or manifestos
It's art -- HA HA -- that's no secret
The one who makes art -- he's the artist..”

Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) German artist

1920s, Huelsendada', Kurt Schwitters, 1920

“The one thing to say about art and life is that art is art and life is life, that art is not life and life is not art. A 'slice-of-life' art is no better or worse than a 'slice-of-art' life. Fine art is not a 'means of making a living' or a 'way of living a life', and a artist who dedicates his life to his art or his art to his life burdens his art with his life and his life with his art. Art that is a matter of life and death is neither fine nor free.”

Ad Reinhardt (1913–1967) American painter

Source: 1956 - 1967, Art-as-Art Dogma' part II, (1964), p. 155

Theo van Doesburg photo

“European art [however] has developed from mimetic-ism and only today is arriving at an elementary plastic art.”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Quote from van Doesburg's article: 'Great Masters of Art' in Dutch art-magazine Eenheid no. 357, 7 April 1917
with elementary plastic art Van Doesburg meant an art without representation (mimetic) any longer]
1912 – 1919

“The one thing to say about art is that it is one thing. Art is art-as-art and everything else is everything else. Art as art is nothing but art. Art is not what is not art.”

Ad Reinhardt (1913–1967) American painter

Quote of Ad Reinhardt (1963); as cited in: Joseph Kosuth, (1969), &quot; Art after Philosophy http://www.ubu.com/papers/kosuth_philosophy.html&quot; <br class="br">1956 - 1967 <br class="br">Variant: The one thing to say about art is that it is one thing. Art is art-as-art and everything else is everything else. Art as art is nothing but art. Art is not what is not art.

Related topics