Harold Rosenberg Quotes

Art is nowhere near as dangerous as it should be.

There are always forces at work in a society, certainly in America, which are really forces of censorship -either religious bodies or zealots who are always putting pressure on things, whether it's books or art or film. And all art is fundamentally subversive, because it upsets people's perceptions, their notions about society. Therefore, art is dangerous, but good art is always making us reassess our thoughts and feelings about how we relate to other people. There are always people who fear that and want to suppress that.

This is what it is the business of the artist to do. Art is theft, art is armed robbery, art is not pleasing your mother.

The laws of art are eternal and don't change at all, as the moral laws don't change in human beings.

I will die for the art & what I believe in. The art ain't always gon' be polite.

I tell myself I use art to promote dissent, but maybe I am just using dissent to promote my art. I plead not guilty to selling out. But I plead it from a bigger house than I used to live in.

You cannot explain me with "isms." They are very bad for an artist. What one must believe in is color.

Only conservatives believe that subversion is still being carried on in the arts and that society is being shaken by it.

I'm very political. Because I read politics every day, so I'm familiar with the world. I approach the films is I'm trying to write what is true, so that supersedes partisan spin, in my opinion. I find partisanship is a thing for cable news and newspaper articles, but it's not interesting for art. I think we all believe what we believe, and I don't think a film is going to change someone's mind.

...art is something subversive. It's something that should not be free. Art and liberty, like the fire of Prometheus, are things that one must steal, to be used against the established order.

You've got to be in a place where you can put your guard down. I've got a long list of things I consider to be selling out. But amongst that list, one of them is when you make art without putting your guard down.

Some things I won't do for any amount of money. That's so demoralizing and goes against every principle that I hold. It's like, okay, some rich people can buy me because I'm a talented guy. They can buy talent. You can't buy it for yourself, but you can buy other people's talent to serve your purposes. And once an artist does that, he becomes like a plaything of the rich. You know, some of these wealthy collectors have paid lots of money for artwork that I already did, but I didn't do it with the intention of catering to them.

What does one prefer? An art that struggles to change the social contract, but fails? Or one that seeks to please and amuse, and succeeds?

Perversity is the muse of modern literature.

When you hear me say "by any means necessary," I mean exactly that. I believe in anything that is necessary to correct unjust conditions-political, economic, social, physical, anything that is necessary.

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

I firmly believe today that the only way to stop violence against women is to speak out and refused to be silenced.

In art, 'good enough' is not good enough.

All art is based on non-conformity.

I look upon literature as an art, and I believe that if you misuse it or abuse it, it will leave you. It is not a thing that you can nail down and use as you want. You have to let it use you, too.

Art is a concrete and personal and rather childish thing after all - no matter what people do to graft it into science and make it sociological and psychological; it is no good at all unless it is let alone to be itself - a game of make-believe, or re-production, very exciting and delightful to people who have an ear for it or an eye for it.

In order to create art today, you have to compromise your art somewhat and be a businessman.

Happy the youth who believes that his duty is to remake the world and bring it more in accord with virtue and justice, more in accord with his own heart. Woe to whoever commences his life without lunacy.

To contradict, even in little matters, is the supreme necessity of art today.

There is no purity with regards to the marketplace and art, I believe.