Harold Rosenberg
- 2 min read
- 4 chapters
Related on Lably
Through World War II
Background
Harold Rosenberg was born on February 2, 1906, in Brooklyn, New York. After studying at the City College of New York from 1923 to 1924, he received his LL.B. from Brooklyn Law School (then a unit of St. Lawrence University) in 1927. Later, he often said he was "educated on the steps of the New York Public Library." Rosenberg embraced a bohemian lifestyle upon contracting osteomyelitis shortly after attaining his degree; the condition ultimately necessitated his use of a cane for the rest of his life.
Sign in to keep reading
3 more chapters are free with a Lably account.
Career
Throughout the 1930s, Rosenberg embraced Marxism and contributed to such publications as Partisan Review, The New Masses, Poetry and Art Front, which he briefly edited.
From 1938 to 1942 he was art editor for the American Guide Series produced by the Works Progress Administration. During this period, he "slowly ... converted to an anti-communist and democratic stance on art toward focusing on individual creativity and the independence of the artist."
For much of World War II, he was deputy chief of the domestic radio bureau in the Office of War Information and a consultant for the Treasury Department from 1945 to 1946.
From 1946, Rosenberg served as a program consultant for the Ad Council until 1973. Following several lectureships and visiting appointments at the New School for Social Research (1953-1959), Princeton University (1963) and Southern Illinois University Carbondale (1965), he became professor of social thought in the art department of the University of Chicago from 1966 until his death.
Personal life and death
Harold Rosenberg died age 72 on July 11, 1978, at his summer home in Springs, New York, from complications of a stroke and pneumonia.
Legacy
Rosenberg is also the subject of a painting by Elaine de Kooning.
Along with Clement Greenberg and Leo Steinberg, he was identified in Tom Wolfe's 1975 book The Painted Word as one of the three figures of "Cultureburg", so named for the enormous degree of influence their criticism exerted over the world of modern art.
Saul Bellow wrote a fictional portrait of Rosenberg in his short story "What Kind of Day Did You Have?".
He was a mentor to the critic, essayist, reporter, and novelist Renata Adler.
In 1987, Alan M. Wald quotes Rosenberg's 1965 "Death in the Wilderness" at the opening of his introductory chapter entitled "Political Amnesia" in his book The New York Intellectuals.