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Simplicity is not a goal, but one arrives at simplicity in spite of oneself, as one approaches the real meaning of things.

Herbert Read

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Herbert Read
Age: 74 †
Born: 1893
Born: November 4
Died: 1968
Died: June 12
Anarchist
Art Historian
Literary Critic
Philosopher
Poet
Writer
Muscoates
North Yorkshire
Sir Herbert Edward Read
Herbert Read
Sir Herbert Read
Herbert Edward Read
Things
Approaches
Spite
Simplicity
Oneself
Meaning
Approach
Goal
Real
Arrives

More quotes by Herbert Read

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Once we become conscious of a feeling and attempt to make a corresponding form, we are engaged in an activity which, far from being sincere, is prepared (as any artist if he is sincere will tell you) to moderate feelings to fit the form. The artist's feeling for form is stronger than a formless feeling.
Herbert Read
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The peculiarity of sculpture is that it creates a three-dimensional object in space. Painting may strive to give on a two-dimensional plane, the illusion of space, but it is space itself as a perceived quantity that becomes the peculiar concern of the sculptor. We may say that for the painter space is a luxury for the sculptor it is a necessity.
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Progress is measured by the degree of differentiation within a society.
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Perhaps it is this theory of all work and no play that has made the Marxist such a very dull boy.
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In general, modern art... has been inspired by a natural desire to chart the uncharted.
Herbert Read
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If we persist in our restless desire to know everything about the universe and ourselves, then we must not be afraid of what the artist brings back from his voyage of discovery.
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That is why I believe that art is so much more significant than either economics or philosophy. It is the direct measure of man's spiritual vision.
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Revolt, it will be said, implies violence but this is an outmoded, an incompetent conception of revolt. The most effective form of revolt in this violent world we live in is non-violence.
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Art is pattern informed by sensibility.
Herbert Read
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But the further step, by means of which a civilization is given its quality or culture, is only attained by a process of cellular division, in the course of which the individual is differentiated, made distinct from and independent of the parent group.
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The only sin is ugliness, and if we believed this with all our being, all other activities of the human spirit could be left to take care of themselves.
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Freud has shown one thing very clearly: that we only forget our infancy by burying it in the unconscious and that the problems of this difficult period find their solution under a disguised form in adult life.
Herbert Read
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It was Nietzsche who first made us conscious of the significance of the individual as a term in the evolutionary process-in that part of the evolutionary process which has still to take place.
Herbert Read
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The modern work of art, as I have said, is a symbol.
Herbert Read
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The great modern heresy in poetry is to confuse the use we make of words in a poem with modalities of speech...For true poetry is never speech but always a song.
Herbert Read
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Man is everywhere still in chains.
Herbert Read
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Progress is measured by richness and intensity of experience - by a wider and deeper apprehension of the significance and scope of human existence.
Herbert Read
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I know of no better name than Anarchism.
Herbert Read
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But all categories of art, idealistic or realistic, surrealistic or constructivist (a new form of idealism) must satisfy a simple test (or they are in no sense works of art): they must persist as objects of contemplation.
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The fundamental purpose of the artist is the same as that of a scientist: to state a fact.
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