I’m writing from Rimini with the window cracked open, hearing the gulls cut the morning air while the espresso machine hisses like sea spray on hot stone. The cool metal of my wheelchair rims reminds me to stay grounded, even when the ideas feel wild. Today I want to talk about Harold Rosenberg, Hannah Arendt, and the stubborn hope tucked inside their notion of action—a way of doing that resists cliché and keeps us human. I’ll simplify a few complex ideas on purpose so you and I can hold them like smooth pebbles in our hands.
A Personal Spark
I first met Rosenberg on the page late at night, the glow of my screen soft as candlelight and the room carrying that paperback smell of dust and glue. His voice felt oddly current: he describes a public losing faith in politicians, experts and media, tangled in bureaucracies and market tricks that feed us prefab identities and tidy lies—until we can’t tell truth from noise or find an honest role to play . The sound of traffic under my window made it feel local, not theoretical. I thought, if this was written decades ago, why does it hum like it’s about right now?
Three Beliefs Worth Questioning
The first belief is that experts and institutions will sort it out if we just wait politely, like passengers listening to the calm ding of a lift. Rosenberg and Arendt saw how systems, even learned ones, can trap us in clichés that sound clean but feel like plastic in the mouth, tasteless and slick . The mainstream script says the centre holds; their counterpoint is that the centre often becomes a centrifuge that spins away judgement.
The second belief is that art is a separate, safe room—white walls, no mess, only “beautiful objects”. Rosenberg argued that the “new painting” broke the wall between art and life; what mattered wasn’t the object but the deed, the action that scuffed the floor and left the room smelling of turpentine and risk . If that’s right, galleries aren’t sanctuaries; they’re stages where life risks itself.
The third belief is that the lone genius saves us, a heroic silhouette lit like a midnight marquee. Rosenberg worried that this myth can be a honeyed trap, a velvet rope that ushers artists into markets and “taste bureaucracies,” where personality gets monetised and the real work turns glossy, smooth, and empty of friction . The applause may be loud, but the echo rings hollow.
Looking Ahead
If these beliefs wobble, the question becomes what to build in their place. The answer, Rosenberg hints, won’t smell like new paint on old ideas; it’ll smell like rain on concrete—fresh, a little metallic, alive with risk .
The Opposite Case, In One Story
Here’s a single story I can’t shake. In the late 1930s, Barnett Newman destroyed his earlier paintings and went quiet, then returned in 1948 with Onement I—a field of colour struck by a single vertical “zip,” as spare as chalk on a slate and as startling as a sudden clap in a silent room . Rosenberg watched that move not as a style change but as an act: a small, decisive revolt against stale scripts, the rough canvas becoming a site where a person tried to change his situation and, maybe, ours too . That one line wasn’t a symbol; it was a life-sign, like the clean, papery tear of opening something new.
Looking Ahead
One good story is enough to seed a practice. If a single “zip” can reframe a life, perhaps your next small line—the email, the sketch, the paragraph that tastes of honesty—can reframe yours.
So, What Exactly Is “Action”?
In plain language, action here means a concrete deed that changes your position in the world—not routine, not ritual, not performance for approval. Imagine the gritty texture of a studio floor under your palms; action is the moment you stand, or wheel, or reach in a new direction and the room subtly tilts. Rosenberg and Arendt cared less about authenticity as a vibe and more about the effectiveness of a move—did it open a path, widen a horizon, change the air you breathe? That’s judgment, exercised not behind glass but in the drafty corridor of public life, where things squeak and smell like work .
Looking Ahead
The test isn’t whether your move is cool; it’s whether tomorrow’s room feels different underfoot. If it does, keep going.
From Canvas To Community
I lead Free Astroscience in Rimini, and our meetings don’t look like museums. We roll in projectors that whirr like distant cicadas; markers squeak across cheap paper; the coffee is strong and slightly burnt. We try to practise Rosenberg’s lesson in our small way: explain complex ideas simply; treat a public talk not as a display case but as an action that invites another action—someone asking a raw question, someone starting a club at their school, someone opening a window in a stuffy room . When we run a star-watching night on the beach, the salt air and the grit under the tripod legs keep us honest.
Looking Ahead
If culture is ossifying, the antidote won’t come from platitudes; it’ll come from modest acts with calloused hands and ink-smudged sleeves.
When Art Becomes Brand (And Why That Matters)
Rosenberg saw the danger in charisma being packaged like candy—sweet on the tongue, sticky on the teeth. He thought Andy Warhol proved how attention can be programmed around an artist’s persona, turning the studio into a bright shop window where the cash register’s metallic clack drowns out the quieter friction of thinking . He wasn’t pious about it; later he praised Saul Steinberg for a different kind of smuggling, using mainstream pages to probe style itself, like tracing a fingerprint in soft clay and finding a self in the ridge lines . The point isn’t to sneer at pop; it’s to keep our sense of touch when surfaces get too smooth.
Looking Ahead
As platforms get shinier, we’ll need rougher tools—handmade formats, slower rooms, dialogues that sound like real voices at a kitchen table.
How To Judge Without Becoming A Scold
Arendt, nudged by Rosenberg, said the task isn’t to stand apart from mass culture with a pinched nose; it’s to exercise taste and judgement inside it, like learning to pick ripe fruit by smell and weight even in a noisy market . In the 1970s, Rosenberg urged writers to drop the expert mask and speak in the “family table talk” register—plain, vivid, a little salty—because people can hear honesty like the clean ring of a glass tapped with a spoon . That’s how I try to write to you now: not above you, not beneath you, but across the table with the steam from the mug curling between us.
Looking Ahead
If we can rebuild judgement as a shared sense, we might yet tune our ears to truth again, even amid the static.
A Simple Practice You Can Try Today
Before you post, publish, or present, pause for sixty seconds and check the action inside your work. Touch the paper or the keyboard; feel the slight drag of skin or the click of keys. Ask yourself one question that smells like real life: If someone meets this, what small move will they be freer to make next? If you can name a move—send a message, map a path, mend a rift—you’ve likely made an action, not a product. If you can’t, scrape back the varnish and try again.
Looking Ahead
Repeat this tiny test for a week and see if the room shifts. If it does, keep the habit; if it doesn’t, change the question.
Closing: The Quiet Courage To Begin
I still hear the gulls. The coffee’s gone cool, a little bitter, but the aftertaste wakes me up. Rosenberg and Arendt don’t offer a utopia; they offer a stance—step away from cliché, trust small acts, judge in public, and let the work smell like sweat when it needs to . If you and I can do that, even once today, we’ll have taken art—and life—out of the frame and into the weather.
Notes for readers: I’ve simplified complex ideas from Rosenberg and Arendt so they’re easier to grasp in one sitting. If something sounds too neat, that’s on me; the original texts are richer and messier, like wet clay under the nails.
“The public has, rightly, lost faith…” and the intertwined theories of action; Rosenberg’s “The American Action Painters” (1952); the risks of the artist-as-brand; Steinberg’s mainstream experiments; Arendt’s turn to public judgement—all come from a recent essay tracing their dialogue and its stakes for culture now .
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