- Born:
- Feb. 2, 1906, Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S.
- Died:
- July 11, 1978, The Springs, N.Y. (aged 72)
- Subjects Of Study:
- Abstract Expressionism
- modern art
- visual arts
Harold Rosenberg
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Who was Harold Rosenberg?
Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978) was an American art critic celebrated for supporting painters like Jackson Pollock. He is known for coining the term Action painting to describe American Abstract Expressionists' work.
Rosenberg's career included roles as an artist’s assistant for Lee Krasner at the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and as the art editor for American Guide, the journal of the WPA. His writings, including "The American Action Painters," championed the artist’s canvas as an arena for action, influencing art movements like Tachism and Gutai. From 1967 until his death in 1978, Rosenberg wrote about art for The New Yorker, offering a readable alternative to the prevailing criticism.
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What was Harold Rosenberg known for?
Harold Rosenberg (1906-1978) was an American art critic who championed artists such as Jackson Pollock. He is most known for coining the term "Action painting" to describe the work of American Abstract Expressionists.
Rosenberg's influential 1952 essay, "The American Action Painters," in Art News championed the artist's canvas as "an arena in which to act." This distanced himself from Clement Greenberg's aesthetic formalism. Rosenberg emphasized how the artist organizes their emotional and intellectual resources as if in a living situation.
His emphasis on gesture led him to champion Franz Kline, Arshile Gorky, and Willem de Kooning as exemplars of Action painting. From 1967 to 1978, he wrote for The New Yorker, showcasing a flamboyant prose style that offered an alternative to Greenberg-inspired criticism.
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What is Abstract Expressionism, and how did Rosenberg relate to it?
Abstract Expressionism was a broad movement in American painting that began in the late 1940s. It became a dominant trend in Western painting during the 1950s, marking a shift of the creative center of modern painting from Paris to New York City.
Harold Rosenberg was an American art critic known for championing Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock. Rosenberg coined the term Action painting to describe their work and emphasized the artist's canvas as "an arena in which to act". He viewed art as an individualistic attempt by an artist to express themselves, rather than simply building on the formal achievements of those before them.
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What was Rosenberg's theory of 'action painting'?
Harold Rosenberg, an American art critic, coined the term "Action painting" to define the direct, instinctual, and dynamic art of American Abstract Expressionists around 1950.
In his influential 1952 essay, "The American Action Painters," Rosenberg championed the idea of the artist’s canvas as "an arena in which to act," emphasizing the artist's emotional and intellectual resources within a living situation. This concept, influenced by Jackson Pollock's notion of painting as a state of being, highlighted gesture, and the act of painting itself, as significant as the finished work, influencing artists associated with Tachism and Gutai.
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How did Rosenberg's ideas differ from those of other art critics?
Harold Rosenberg, an American art critic, significantly differed from his contemporaries by focusing on the artist's individual expression rather than formal achievements. He viewed the canvas as "an arena in which to act," an encounter between the painter and their material, emphasizing self-creation through art.
This contrasted with Clement Greenberg's formalist approach, which analyzed art based on its aesthetic value, divorced from external influences like the artist's intentions or cultural context. While Greenberg favored Jackson Pollock, Rosenberg preferred Arshile Gorky and Willem de Kooning, valuing their expression of the "anxious self".
Lawrence Alloway, another critic, further diverged by embracing Pop art and mass culture, dismissing the high/low art distinction.
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How has Harold Rosenberg influenced the understanding of modern art?
Harold Rosenberg significantly shaped the understanding of modern art through his concept of Action painting, which he introduced in his 1952 essay, "The American Action Painters".
Rosenberg's championing of Action painting emphasized the canvas as an arena where the artist engages in a dynamic act of creation, reflecting their emotional and intellectual state. This notion influenced artists associated with Tachism and Gutai, and it served as a theoretical basis for Happenings. His criticism, marked by a flamboyant style, offered an alternative to the formalist approach, focusing on art's capacity to represent resistance against societal forces.
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Harold Rosenberg (born Feb. 2, 1906, Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S.—died July 11, 1978, The Springs, N.Y.) was an American art critic known for championing the work of such painters as Jackson Pollock. He coined the term Action painting to describe the work of American Abstract Expressionists.
Rosenberg studied at the City College of New York (1923–24) and at Brooklyn Law School (1927). In the mid-1930s he worked as an artist’s assistant for Lee Krasner at the Works Progress Administration (WPA) before beginning his career as the art editor (1938–42) for American Guide, the journal of the WPA. He also contributed articles about literature and politics to the journal Partisan Review from 1937 to 1944 and was partly responsible for introducing the art critic Clement Greenberg to that publication’s editorial circle. Despite his involvement in the art world, Rosenberg did not commit himself to writing art criticism until December 1952, when he published his influential essay “The American Action Painters” in Art News, a publication that would later become identified with both his views on art and his poetic literary style. In that essay he championed the idea of the artist’s canvas as “an arena in which to act,” strategically distancing himself from Greenberg’s aesthetic formalism (the position that the aesthetic value of an artwork is not derived from or dependent upon anything outside the artwork itself) at a time when both Pollock and Willem de Kooning had momentarily returned to painting the figure. For Rosenberg the crucial fact of the new painting was the way that it showed how “the artist organizes his emotional and intellectual resources as if he were in a living situation.” In part this emphasis can be viewed as following up on Pollock’s widely publicized remark that “painting is a state of being….Every good painter paints what he is.” But it also reflected Rosenberg’s long-standing chagrin about the widespread influence of Greenberg’s aesthetics (the two had ceased being friends in 1938).
The emphasis on the primacy of gesture led Rosenberg to champion the work of Franz Kline, Arshile Gorky, and particularly de Kooning as the most consequential exemplars of his notion of Action painting. That notion proved to be influential in France and Japan, respectively influencing the artists associated with Tachism and Gutai (Gutai Bijutsu Kyōkai [“Concrete Art Association”]; 1954–72). Despite Rosenberg’s claim that “the new painting has broken down every distinction between art and life,” his ideas proved to be influential in a way he did not approve of; they served as a theoretical basis for Allan Kaprow’s sense that “painting had become a symbol rather than a power, i.e., something which stood for experience rather than acting directly upon it.” Kaprow’s response was to create a series of events called Happenings, which took the idea of artistic gesture past the confines of the canvas and out into public space. These events set the stage for the emergence of Pop art, which Rosenberg later dismissed as “a demonstration model in an unspoken lecture on the history of illusionism.”
From 1967 until his death in 1978, Rosenberg wrote regularly about art and related matters for The New Yorker, frequently evidencing a flamboyant and poetic prose style that offered an independent and popularly readable alternative to the intellectually demanding Greenberg-inspired criticism that was being published in Artforum during the same period. Rosenberg’s criticism was always concerned with the metaphysical status of the self living in a perpetual state of self-(re)invention, emphasizing and idealizing the ways that art could represent an autonomous resistance to the totalizing forces of fashion, bureaucracy, and commerce. His major writings include “The American Action Painters” (1952) in The Tradition of the New (1959) and “The Game of Illusion: Pop and Gag” (1964) in The Anxious Object: Art Today and Its Audience (1966).