Herbert Read: Art and Idealism

Herbert Read was one of the most influential art and literary theorists of modernism active in the first half of the twentieth century. He is frequently credited with bringing modern art and modernism to a wide public and was dubbed by friends and foes alike as the ‘Pope of Modern Art.’ As a broadcaster on the BBC and a prolific writer Read was a well known public figure, but his understanding of art, literature and society was built on sometimes recondite forms of Continental Philosophy, particularly idealist philosophy. That he was able to turn these into a theory of culture admired not only by artists, writers and political activists but the wider public is a measure of his skill as a thinker and writer. In this highly readable text Dr Michael Paraskos explains how Read understood idealist theories and how he hybridised them with his anarchist political beliefs to create a uniquely Readian form of anarchist cultural theory.