Harold Rosenberg

“The herd of independent minds.”

“The aim of art is to create space—space that is not compromised by decoration or illustration, space within which the subjects of painting can live.”

“In the United States the artist is a lonely figure, he exists in a kind of vacuum.”

“At a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena in which to act.”

“The gesture on the canvas was a gesture of liberation, from Value—political, aesthetic, moral.”

“Genius is the capacity for productive reaction against one's training.”

“A work of art is a confession.”

“What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event.”

“The painter no longer approached his easel with an image in his mind; he went up to it with material in his hand to do something to that other piece of material in front of him. The image would be the result of this encounter.”

“The new painting has broken down every distinction between art and life.”

“Today, each artist must undertake to invent himself, a life-long act of creation that constitutes the essential content of the artist's work.”

“A painting that is an act is inseparable from the biography of the artist.”

“Art is a way of possessing the world.”

“The function of the artist is to disturb. His duty is to arouse the sleepers, to shake the complacent pillars of the world.”

“The anxious object is a work of art that is uncertain of its own identity.”

“Ours is a time of the doctrine of the omnipotence of the art critic.”

“To be an artist is to believe in life.”

“The past is a work of art, created by memory.”