Quote

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.

Herbert Read

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Much
Economics
Believe
Significant
Men
Direct
Philosophy
Vision
Either
Spiritual
Art
Measure

More quotes by Herbert Read

Image
Love works miracles in stillness.
Herbert Read
Image
In general, modern art... has been inspired by a natural desire to chart the uncharted.
Herbert Read
Image
An enormous amount of art and literature is erotic in the sense that it stimulates vague sexual emotions, but it has no pornographic intention or effect because it leaves everything to the imagination. The consumer has to invent his own images, and it is felt, I do not know with what justification, that there is no harm in this.
Herbert Read
Image
Art is pattern informed by sensibility.
Herbert Read
Image
It is already clear, after twenty years of socialism in Russia, that if you do not provide your society with a new religion, it will gradually revert to the old one.
Herbert Read
Image
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.
Herbert Read
Image
Simplicity is not a goal, but one arrives at simplicity in spite of oneself, as one approaches the real meaning of things.
Herbert Read
Image
Man is everywhere still in chains.
Herbert Read
Image
In order to create it is necessary to destroy and the agent of destruction in society is the poet. I believe that the poet is necessarily an anarchist, and that he must oppose all organized conceptions of the State, not only those which we inherit from the past, but equally those which are imposed on people in the name of the future.
Herbert Read
Image
I know of no better name than Anarchism.
Herbert Read
Image
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.
Herbert Read
Image
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
Image
The most general law in nature is equity-the principle of balance and symmetry which guides the growth of forms along the lines of the greatest structural efficiency.
Herbert Read
Image
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
Image
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.
Herbert Read
Image
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
Image
Intellect begins with the observation of nature, proceeds to memorize and classify the facts thus observed, and by logical deduction builds up that edifice of knowledge properly called scienceĀ… But admittedly we also know by feeling, and we can combine the two faculties, and present knowledge in the guise of art.
Herbert Read
Image
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.
Herbert Read
Image
The principle of equity first came into evidence in Roman jurisprudence and was derived by analogy from the physical meaning of the word.
Herbert Read
Image
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.
Herbert Read