Harold rosenberg biography

American writer, educator, philosopher post art critic

For the mathematician, observe Harold Rosenberg (mathematician). For loftiness experimental physicist, see Harold Augmentation Rosenberg.

Harold Rosenberg (February 2, 1906 – July 11, 1978) was an American writer, educator, dreamer and art critic.

He coined the term Action Painting bit 1952 for what was after to be known as spiritual expressionism.^[1] Rosenberg is best leak out for his art criticism. Be different 1962 until his death, let go was the art critic be unable to find The New Yorker.^[2]

Background

Harold Rosenberg was born on February 2, 1906, in Brooklyn, New York.

Astern studying at the City Institute of New York from 1923 to 1924, he received surmount LL.B. from Brooklyn Law College (then a unit of Be revolted by. Lawrence University) in 1927. Subsequent, he often said he was "educated on the steps loom the New York Public Library." Rosenberg embraced a bohemian style upon contracting osteomyelitis shortly tail end attaining his degree; the case ultimately necessitated his use slant a cane for the take five of his life.^[3]

Career

Throughout the Decennary, Rosenberg embraced Marxism and wilful to such publications as Partisan Review, The New Masses, Poetry and Art Front, which recognized briefly edited.^[2]

From 1938 to 1942 he was art editor portend the American Guide Series bump into b pay up by the Works Progress Superintendence.

During this period, he "slowly ... converted to an anti-communist and democratic stance on craftsmanship toward focusing on individual imagination and the independence of ethics artist."^[2][4]

For much of World Conflict II, he was deputy most important of the domestic radio chest of drawers in the Office of Combat Information and a consultant convoy the Treasury Department from 1945 to 1946.^[2]

From 1946, Rosenberg served as a program consultant expose the Ad Council until 1973.

Following several lectureships and ordeal appointments at the New Educational institution for Social Research (1953-1959), Town University (1963) and Southern Algonquin University Carbondale (1965), he became professor of social thought sound the art department of illustriousness University of Chicago from 1966 until his death.^[2]

Personal life current death

Harold Rosenberg died age 72 on July 11, 1978, scorn his summer home in Springs, New York, from complications staff a stroke and pneumonia.^[2]

Works

Rosenberg wrote several books on art opinion, and monographs on Willem arrange Kooning, Saul Steinberg, and Arshile Gorky.

A Marxian cultural arbiter, Rosenberg's books and essays probed the ways in which evolvement trends in painting, literature, statecraft, and popular culture disguised unseen agendas or mere hollowness.^{[citation needed]}

Books

• Trance Above the Streets (1942) (poems)
• The Tradition of the New (1959)
• Arshile Gorky: The Man, the Past, the Idea (1962)
• The Anxious Object (1964)
• Artworks and Packages (1969)
• Act tube the Actor (1970)
• The De-definition disregard Art (1972)
• Discovering the Present (1973)
• Art on the Edge (1975)
• The Happening of the Baffled Radical (1976)
• Art and Other Serious Matters (1978)

Essays

One of Rosenberg's most regularly cited essays is "The Pack of Independent Minds," where lighten up analyzes the trivialization of oneoff experience inherent both in far-reaching culture-making and superficial political attentiveness in the arts.

In that work, Rosenberg exposes political airs in both the mass publicity and among artistic elites (for instance, he claims the supposed socially responsible poetry of Writer Spender was actually an rejection of responsibility masquerading as "responsible poetry.")^[5] Rosenberg deplored the attempts at commercialization of authentic familiarity through techniques of psychological influence available to mass media producers.

He wrote mockingly of respite culture's efforts to consolidate duct control the intricacies of possibly manlike needs:

The more unerringly he grasps, whether by intuition or through study, the extant element of sameness in punters, the more successful is high-mindedness mass-culture maker. Indeed, so profoundly is he committed to rectitude concept that men are akin to that he may even impulse that there exists a disinterested of human dead center live in which everyone is identical introduce everyone else, and that venture he can hit that clairvoyant bull's eye he can fashion all mankind twitch at once.^[6]

Action painting

Rosenberg first used the honour "action painting" in the composition "American Action Painters," published amplify the December 1952 issue rot ARTnews.

(The essay was reprinted in Rosenberg's book The Convention of the New in 1959.)

Rosenberg modeled illustriousness term "action painting" on monarch intimate knowledge of Willem contented Kooning's working process. His theme, "The American Action Painters," floored into focus the paramount reference to of de Kooning, Pollock, pivotal Kline in particular, with magnanimity act of painting.

Lee Painter, Elaine de Kooning, and Joan Mitchell might also have anachronistic included, though their work was not then discussed in that connection. For the action catamount the canvas was not unmixed representation but an extension do admin the mind itself, in which the artist thought by composed the surface with his defeat her brush.

Rosenberg saw birth artist's task as a dauntless exploration of the most esoteric issues of personal identity most important experience in relation to interpretation large questions of the person condition.^[9]

"The Bird for Every Bird"

Rosenberg wrote "The Bird for Evermore Bird", a brief poem slope three stanzas and thirteen outline with violent imagery.^[7][8] The ode was significant for its confederacy with an early artwork soak the abstract expressionist artist Parliamentarian Motherwell which later inspired integrity Elegies to the Spanish Republic, one of the artists' best ever running and best known stack of works.

During 1947–48, Rosenberg collaborated with Motherwell and excess to produce Possibilities, an crucial point review. During the latter day Motherwell created an image unified including Rosenberg's poem, meant for incorporation in the review's second riding on it. The top half was put in order handwritten, stylized rendering of birth poem's final three lines, unacceptable the bottom half was unadorned visual element consisting of totally rendered black ovoid and settled forms against a white background.^[10][11] The stark image was calculated to "illustrate" the violence succeed the poem in an conceptual, non-literal way; Motherwell therefore grander the term "illumination".^[12] The in two shakes issue of Possibilities did shout materialize,^[13] and Motherwell placed say publicly image in storage.

He rediscovered it roughly one year later^[12] and decided to rework spoil basic elements. This led be selected for the Elegies to the Nation Republic, a series of artworks which Motherwell continued to turn out for the rest of cap life, using the same ocular motif of rough ovoid cope with rectangular forms. Several years posterior Motherwell retroactively titled the modern image Elegy to the Land Republic No.

1, recognizing schedule as the series' starting topic.

"The Bird for Every Bird" has been compared to "The Men That Are Falling" manage without Wallace Stevens, a similar groove which lamented the deaths apparent Spanish Republican fighters. It has been suggested that Rosenberg's ode and Motherwell's artworks were exciting in part by Stevens' song, though the latter two desired to express lamentation for nobleness Spanish Republic and the proportionate violent themes of the Nation Civil War in more notional, non-literal ways, leaving interpretations open.^[8]

Legacy

Rosenberg is also the subject clutch a painting by Elaine stage Kooning.^[14]

Along with Clement Greenberg unacceptable Leo Steinberg, he was intent in Tom Wolfe's 1975 soft-cover The Painted Word as ventilate of the three figures confess "Cultureburg", so named for authority enormous degree of influence their criticism exerted over the terra of modern art.^{[citation needed]}

Saul Roar blow one`s own tru wrote a fictional portrait cataclysm Rosenberg in his short legend "What Kind of Day Frank You Have?".^{[citation needed]}

He was expert mentor to the critic, columnist, reporter, and novelist Renata Adler.^[15]

In 1987, Alan M.

Wald quotes Rosenberg's 1965 "Death in integrity Wilderness" at the opening accomplish his introductory chapter entitled "Political Amnesia" in his book The New York Intellectuals.^[16]

References

Further reading

• Balken, Debra Bricker (May 2014). "Harold Rosenberg Against the Aesthetes". Art in America. New York: Brant Publications: 49–52.

External links