In the United States, revolts tends to be directed against specific situations, rarely against the social structure as a whole. - Harold Rosenberg

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.

Abstract art as it is conceived at present is a game bequeathed to painting and sculpture by art history. One who accepts its premises must consent to limit his imagination to a depressing casuistry regarding the formal requirements of modernism.

Abandoned by philosophy, politics, and sociology, historical determinism continues to hold out in formalist art criticism.