93 Quotes by Herbert Read

Works of art must persist as objects of contemplation.

Art in its widest sense is the extension of the personality: a host of artificial limbs.

Art is an indecent exposure of the consciousness.

Spontaneity is not enough - or, to be more exact, spontaneity is not possible until there is an unconscious coordination of form, space and vision.

The classicist, and the naturalist who has much in common with him, refuse to see in the highest works of art anything but the exercise of judgement, sensibility, and skill. The romanticist cannot be satisfied with such a normal standard; for him art is essentially irrational - an experience beyond normality, sometimes destructive of normality, and at the very least evocative of that state of wonder which is the state of mind induced by the immediately inexplicable.

If modern art has produced symbols that are unfamiliar, that was only to be expected.

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.

The work of art ... is an instrument for tilling the human psyche, that it may continue to yield a harvest of vital beauty.

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.