Herbert Read

Nikolaus Pevsner's Pioneers of Modern Movement is considered the foundational text of two new historical fields, the history of modern architecture and the history of design. This contribution, nevertheless, discusses this text in the context of art-historical discipline. Pevsner himself namely understood his work as a complement to Kunstgeschichte: by defining the 'Modern Movement' in established art-historical terms and also by discussing not only architecture but attempting to define the style and the worldview expressed in it for the whole period and all of visual arts. Specifically, this contribution is interested in the place that Pevsner allocated to the design within his art-historical edifice, since inclusion of objects of everyday use within an art-historical study was not (and still is not) usual. For Pevsner, on the contrary, design (linked to architecture) turns out to be a key component of his narrative, even if not for aesthetic but rather for moral or social reasons.
Keywords: Nikolaus Pevsner, history of design, history of modern architecture, the Modern Movement, Herbert Read, Alois Riegl.

The concepts of expression, expressiveness and expressionism present the key terms on which contemporary architectural and artistic works are based. Although these are essential esthetic categories, the explanations of these concepts are not clearly defined in scientific and theoretical texts. When the term expressionism is mentioned, it often implies the stylistic direction in architecture and the arts, which was created and lasted until the beginning of the XX century in northern Europe (especially in Germany and the Netherlands), and in which the artists have twisted the reality with exaggerated and energetic strokes to express their inner visions, ideas or emotions. However, contemporary theoretical discussions in the arts and architecture point to the manifestation of expressionism in other periods and contexts as well. The basic aim of the text is a critical discourse of interrelations among esthetic categories of expression, expressiveness and expressionism; reexamination of their positions and roles in the system of visual expression, as well as the examination of the starting hypothesis in research, according to which expressionism in architecture is a radical creative tendency with distinctive choleric-sanguine characteristics.

Oslanjajući se na stavove poznatog umetničkog kritičara Herberta Rida (Herbert Read), po kome realizam, idealizam i ekspresionizam nisu posebni pravci u umetnosti, već predstavljaju stalne osnovne činioce u svim umetnostima, u ovom radu se razmatra mogućnost postojanja elementarnih stvaralačkih opredeljenja i u arhitekturi. Polazeći od osnovnih vidova opažanja i predstavljanja sveta oko nas, putem komparativne analize i primera iz drugih oblasti, izložena je teza da bi adekvatan pandan Ridovim osnovnim činiocima u umetnosti - realizmu, idealizmu i ekspresionizmu, u arhitekturi bili pojmovi mimezisa (mimikrije), asocijativnosti i ekspresije. U zavisnosti od društveno-političkih, kulturno-istorijskih i drugih okolnosti, neki od ovih činilaca s vremena na vreme izlaze na površinu i zaogrnuti miljeom vremena, javljaju se u nekom novom ili starom obliku, koji možemo prepoznati kao umetnički pravac ili stil.

CHAPTER 30: The City, Urban Planning and Architecture:

The commodification of art is just as in evidence in the ‘art’ of architecture. Architecture is perhaps the most obviously commodified and the most essential to western capitalism of all the arts. Is architecture an art? Can it ever be de-commodified? I will argue that mass housing is a key example of the commodification of culture in architecture, also however that the self-build form of housing is a potential example of architecture breaking away from this commodification. A return to what N. John Habraken called, in an echo of Read, the natural relationship. This form of architecture and the historic example of The Architects’ Revolutionary Council, as a rebellion from within the profession, will form the basis of my argument.

Friedrich Nietzsche was not an anarchist. His ideas nevertheless generated strong interest from key figures from the historical anarchist movement which began in the 1890s. Gustav Landauer, Emma Goldman and others reflected on the chances offered and the dangers posed by these ideas in relation to their own politics. Heated debates over meaning, for example on the will to power or on the status of women in Nietzsche’s works, provided even the most vehement critics such as Peter Kropotkin with productive cues for developing their own theories. In recent times, a newer strand called ‘post-anarchism’ has invoked Nietzsche’s ideas, while also disregarding the historical variants of ’Nietzschean anarchism’. This calls into question the innovative potential of post-anarchism. The book adopts a transnational perspective and is the first to document the anarchist reception of Nietzsche in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States through a historically contextualised account.

Herbert Read (1893-1968) is known for his writings on art history and modernist art. Read’s work contains scientific, romantic, and formalist views specific to modern culture. The most important of these views is Read’s emphasis on intuitiveness in artistic production throughout history. According to this view, regardless of cultural changes and consciousness transformations, there is intuitiveness hidden in the works produced. For Read, intuitiveness is essential to a universal aesthetic and art. This study aims to describe Read’s views on this subject. In this study, Read’s approach to art history was discussed, and his views were accepted as a scope. The study is shaped by explaining them and
emphasizing the important points. Furthermore, the study asks what  Read’s
universalist stance might mean for contemporary culture and art. In this study,
Read’s views are re-examined within the framework of the criticism of formalism,
which has become visible with contemporary art. In the study, Read’s works were
examined in terms of content and concept. As a result, it has been determined
that there is a potential for contemporary culture and art in Read’s thoughts to
try to separate from western centeredness.
Keywords: Herbert Read, Modern Art, Universality, Art Philosophy

This paper argues that the writings of cultural-theorist Jean Baudrillard from the late 1960s and early 1970s provided an important contribution to twentieth-century Design Theory. Baudrillard’s theory of consumer society was informed by a critical engagement with themes that preoccupied twentieth-century design practice and theory. Rejecting the designer’s testimony as evidence, Baudrillard insisted that design be understood within the broader sociological context of consumer society. Towards the close of the 1960s, as the universalist project of Functionalism was attacked by various factions, Baudrillard uniquely argued that Functionalism had not simply failed to establish a singular mode of design in opposition to the multiplicity of fashion; rather Functionalism was fashion’s progenitor and perfect exemplar.

Статья состоит из трех частей. В первой части содержится критический обзор таких тем, как отношение художника к природе, соотношение изображения природы с художественным вкусом в британской эстетике, начиная с XVIII века. Во второй части эти же проблемы рассмотрены в контексте современной эстетики. Третья часть посвящена работе Герберта Рида "Человечное искусство и бесчеловечная природа" (1952).

Luigi Pericle belongs to that group of 20th century artists and writers who entrusted their work to what could be defined as “posthumousness”. Posthumousness manifests itself when an author does not wish or is unable to have their work acknowledged and appreciated while still alive, thus projecting it into a temporal limbo of obscurity, where it can linger for decades or, potentially, forever. Posthumousness takes on its real meaning when a work is endowed with such an aesthetic energy as to challenge and ultimately break away
from its state of oblivion. This might occur gradually and slowly, or with an unexpected sudden rediscovery, depending on the material conditions and the cultural context in which posthumousness is set in motion and is finally brought to an end.

Özet
1980 sonrası Türkiye’de seramik sanatının kimliğine ve/ya da statüsüne dair tartışmalar görece yoğun biçimde gündeme gelir. Attila Galatalı’nın bu dönemde geliştirdiği bir kuram, modern seramik sanatını tanımlamaya yönelik Türkiye’deki ilk kapsamlı çalışmadır. Gerek bu kuramda, gerekse seramik sanatına ilişkin diğer söylemlerde Herbert Read ismi ve onun toprak-kapları plastik sanatların en soyutu olarak gören yaklaşımı önemli bir yer tutar. Heykelsi, hatta kavramsalcı seramikler için Read’in bazı ifadeleri ısrarla tekrarlanır. Oysa Read’in 1930’larda modern sanata dâhil etmeye çalıştığı şey, seramik değil, “seramik kap”tır. Çünkü erken 20. yüzyıl İngiltere’sinde “seramik kap”, saf, soyut yapısı üzerinden modern sanata eklemlenmeye çalışılmış ve bu yaklaşım, yine aynı ülkede yeşeren formalist estetiğin “eşitlikçi” bakışının hazırladığı zeminde gelişmiştir. Dolayısıyla Read’in toprak kaplar özelindeki söylemleri Türk sanat ortamında açıkça yanlış anlaşılmış ve İngiliz düşünüre gerçekte söylemediği sözler atfedilmiştir. Bu durum basit bir çeviri hatasından çok, söz konusu sanat dalının erken 20. yüzyıldaki modernleşme sürecinin Türkiye’de yeterince bilinmemesinden kaynaklanmış gibi görünmektedir. 
Abstract
The discussions about the identity/status of ceramic art come up relatively heavily after 1980 in Turkey. A theory developed by Attila Galatalı during this period is the first comprehensive study aimed at identifying the modern ceramic art in Turkey. The name of Herbert Read and his approach that sees pottery as a plastic art in its most abstract form occupy an important place both in this theory and in other discourses on ceramic art. Some of Read's statements are repeated insistently for sculptural, even conceptual ceramics. However, what Read tried to include in modern art in the 1930s is not ceramic but pottery. Because in the early 20th century England, "pottery" was tried to be incorporated to the modern art through its pure, abstract structure; and this approach developed on the ground prepared by the "egalitarian" view of the formalist aesthetics that flourished in the same country. Therefore, Read's discourses specific to pottery were clearly misunderstood in the Turkish art scene and the expressions he did not actually say were attributed to the British thinker. Rather than a simple translation error, it appears that the situation has been caused by the fact that the modernization process of art pottery in the early 20th century is not sufficiently known in Turkey.

In this article, the positions of Thomas Stearns Eliot and Herbert Read will be presented regarding the ways of cultural transmission. Through their respective works, Notes Towards the Definition of Culture and Education through Art, they both advocate a position on this issue.
Both of them believe that education is the main form of cultural transmission in contemporary society, but they understand the role and purpose of education in different ways. For Eliot, the main purpose of education is to maintain a high culture, while for Read, education through
art and the free development of each person are the important cultural values. The position of each author will be exposed in detail, as a result of their analysis.

Drawing on the fragmentary chain of letters between George Woodcock and Herbert Read, this article uses these materials as a point of departure to consider the development of Woodcock’s cultural politics. Focusing on the memories he explored in his autobiographical writing, his histories of anarchism and Canada, and his project to live off the land, it examines the ways in which Woodcock looked to anarchism’s past to theorise afresh its future.

To Hell With Culture was Herbert Read’s most concise exposition of his aesthetic politics, but it was a work moulded by the particular context in which he wrote. Starting life as a contribution to a series of pamphlets pondering the shape of Britain in the aftermath of the Second World War, Read drew on a deep reading of socialist intellectual history to plot a new, radical path for democracy. His text was a necessary utopia, presenting an outcry against the cultural barbarities of both the capitalist and totalitarian superpowers, and entering a battle of ideas to determine the shape of post-war Europe.

‘Michael Baxandall’, ‘Douglas Crimp’, ‘Marc Fumaroli’, ‘Ernst H. Gombrich’, ‘Griselda Pollock’, ‘Herbert Read’, ‘Colin Rowe’, ‘Viktor Stoichita’, ‘Edgar Wind’, ‘Rudolf Wittkower’, Enciclopedia dell’Arte Contemporanea, Roma: Treccani, 2021, I 314, I 647, II 181, II 269-70, III 698, IV 22, 143-44, 404,  723, 725.

Luigi Pericle appartiene alla composita famiglia di artisti e letterati del Novecento che hanno affidato la loro opera a quella che potremmo definire la “spinta postuma”. La spinta postuma si presenta quando un autore non desidera o non è in grado di far sì che la sua opera venga conosciuta e apprezzata durante la sua vita. Ciò proietta l’opera in un limbo temporale di oscurità, nel quale essa può rimanere nascosta per decenni o potenzialmente anche per sempre. Tuttavia, la spinta postuma assume per noi il suo vero significato solo quando quest’opera possiede un’energia estetica tale da sfidare, e infine spezzare, la sua condizione di oblio. Questo può avvenire gradualmente e lentamente, oppure con una riscoperta improvvisa, a seconda delle condizioni materiali e del clima culturale in cui la spinta postuma si mette in moto e, infine, si arresta.

After the tragedies of the twentieth century, the utopian impulse was subject to searching criticism by a host of liberal intellectuals including Karl Popper, Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, and Jacob Talmon. Looking to history and political philosophy, these thinkers impugned utopianism for so frequently destroying the freedoms it appeared to pursue. Defined by its theoretical contradictions, the utopian project, rooted in the politics of the Enlightenment, bore some responsibility for the totalitarianism and genocide that had shaped their lives. As this critique became liberal orthodoxy, a heretic group of anarchist thinkers challenged these conclusions. While travelling some distance with the liberal critics, for Paul Goodman, Marie Louise Berneri, and Herbert Read, the twentieth century, rather than invalidating the utopian urge made its boldness and experimentalism all the more vital. Their act of heresy was defending utopianism as a central component of their anarchist critique of the present.

A propósito do Serviço de Animação, Criação Artística e Educação Pela Arte [ACARTE] da Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, fundado por Madalena de Azeredo Perdigão Ana Bigotte Vieira esteve à conversa com o psicopedagogo, investigador, Professor e grande impulsionador da Educação pela Arte, Arquimedes da Silva Santos, colaborador chegado de Madalena Perdigão em diversos projectos.
Conversou-se sobre a reforma do Conservatório Nacional no início dos anos Setenta, a criação da escola de Educação pela Arte, a tentativa de reestruturação do Ensino Artístico em finais dos anos Setenta e a criação do ACARTE, com o seu Centro de Arte Infantil. Mas tudo isto parece remontar mais atrás, aos tempos em que eram estudantes em Coimbra, nos anos Quarenta.

Según Arnold Hauser, el propósito de la historia es comprender el presente. Su controvertida Historia social de la literatura y el arte (1951) culmina «bajo el signo del cine». Este interés por el cine se remonta a su experiencia como distribuidor de películas en Viena (1924-1938), cuando proyectó una inacabada Dramaturgia y sociología del film. No obstante, su siguiente investigación, Manierismo: la crisis del Renacimiento y los orígenes del arte moderno (1964), parece renunciar a la problemática del medio artístico de masas, habiendo sido interpretado como una «retirada del marxismo». Recurriendo a los archivos de C. H. Beck (Múnich), de la Biblioteca del Congreso (Washington D.C.), y del archivo de literatura alemana (Marbach), indagamos en por qué Hauser escribió Manierismo y no un libro sobre cine, recogiendo su contacto con Theodor Adorno, Herbert Read y Siegfried Kracauer. Concluimos que la historia de su gestación documenta la elección pragmática de un intelectual independiente, exiliado, y en intranquila precariedad económica.

According to Arnold Hauser, the purpose of history is the understanding of the present. His controversial Social History of Art (1951) culminated in «The Film Age». This interest in cinema dates back to his experience as distributor of films in Vienna (1924-1938), when he planned an unfinished Dramaturgy and Sociology of Film. This notwithstanding, his following investigation, Mannerism: the Crisis of the Renaissance and the Origin of Modern Art (1964), seems to disengage from the problematic of mass art and its medium, and some have interpreted it as a «retreat from Marxism». Consulting the archives of C.H. Beck (Munich), the Library of Congress (Washington D.C.), and the German Literature Archive (Marbach), this paper inquires why Hauser wrote Mannerism and not a book on cinema, chronicling his contact with Theodor Adorno, Herbert Read and Siegfried Kracauer. We conclude that the history of its gestation documents the pragmatic choice of an independent, exiled intellectual in a situation of uneasy economic precariousness.

n view of the current progress of what has been named the ‘visual turn’ or the ‘pictorial turn’,1 it is exciting to witness Sam Rose’s return to early aesthetic formalist-modernism, which was so passionate about the medium, its appearance, and visuality. Rose’s project shares a recent inclination to think anew the advent of aesthetic modernism.2 It is founded on the presumption that visual art ought to be – and actually has always been – theoretically subsumed under one meta-project. This meta-project does not necessarily have a clear telos, but it does have a history. In support of this view, Rose appeals to Stanley Cavell’s claim that ‘only masters of a game, perfect slaves to that project, are in a position to establish conventions which better serve its essence. This is why deep revolutionary changes can result from attempts to conserve a project, to take it back to its idea, keep it in touch with its history’ (p. 155).

Contents:

About this issue’s cover

George Woodcock’s Transatlantic Anarchism
- Allan Antliff and Matthew Adams

Pacifism, Violence and Aesthetics: George Woodcock’s Anarchist Sojourn, 1940-1950
- Mark Antliff

George Woodcock: The Ghost Writer of Anarchism
- Süreyyya Evren and Ruth Kinna

Kropotkin, Woodcock and Les Temps Nouveaux
- Iain McKay

Memory, History, and Homesteading: George Woodcock, Herbert Read and Intellectual Networks
- Matthew Adams

George Woodcock on ‘The Anarchist Critic’
- Allan Antliff

In an article in The Burlington Magazine of 1933, British theorist Herbert Read (1893–1968) proposed “a basic linear signature of our race.” His invocation of line as a mark of identity is representative of a wider community of thinkers who linked the British avant-garde with medieval illumination via the watercolors of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Theorists and scholars such as Kenneth Clark (1903–1983), William George Constable (1887–1976), and Nikolaus Pevsner (1902–1983) joined Read in identifying drawing as an essential aspect of medieval illumination that had re-emerged in the compositions of the Romantic period as well as those of the Neo-Romantics, including John Piper (1903–1992) and Paul Nash (1889–1946). Theoretical enthusiasm for this lineage arose not only from aesthetic affinities but also from political utility. Amid concerns over mounting political extremism, notions of medieval art were useful as emblems of British precedent for sustainable and proud work. This paper traces the use of line at the time, most notably by Read, as a symbolic mark that promoted a balance between individualism and collectivism through its connection to the medieval period. Furthermore, I argue that harnessing the moral connotations of line was possible, and particularly effective, because of culturally available understandings of the drawn line's distinctive intimacy.

The Tenth Muse Essays in Criticism,  Sir Herbert Read summarizes the emergence and relevance of Stirner's philosophy at the end of the 20th and at the beginning of the 21th century within english circle. After a sleep of a hundred years the giants whom Marx thought he had slain show signs of coming to life again...

Introduction - Matthew S. Adams and Ruth Kinna

Part I: The interventionist debate

1 Saving the future: the roots of Malatesta's anti-militarism - Davide Turcato

2 The Manifesto of the Sixteen: Kropotkin's rejection of anti-war anarchism and his critique of the politics of peace - Peter Ryley

3 Malatesta and the war interventionist debate 1914-17: from the 'Red Week' to the Russian Revolutions - Carl Levy

Part II: Debates and divisions

4 Beyond the 'People's Community': the anarchist movement from fin de siècle to the First World War in Germany - Lucas Keller

5 'No man and no penny': F. Domela Nieuwenhuis, anti-militarism and the opportunities of World War One - Bert Altena

6 'The bomb plot of Zürich': Indian nationalism, Italian anarchism and the First World War - Ole Birk Laursen

7 The French anarchist movement and the First World War - Constance Bantman and
David Berry

8 At war with Empire: the anti-colonial roots of American anarchist debates during World War I - Kenyon Zimmer

Part III: The art of war: anti-militarism and revolution

9 The anarchist anti-conscription movement in the U.S. - Kathy E. Ferguson

10 Aestheticising revolution - Allan Antliff

11Mutualism in the trenches: anarchism, militarism and the lessons of the First World War - Matthew S. Adams
Index

‘What is a Poem?’ Herbert Read asked at the close of his final volume of poetry, Collected Poems (1966). This question was to preside over the later years of his career as both a poet and a critic, and to reach its most intriguing conclusion in his often-overlooked poetry collection ‘Vocal Avowals’. First printed in 1959 in Encounter, Read revisited this sequence throughout the final decade of his life, revised and reprinted for the 1962 collection Worte sagen aus, and then as the final section in Read’s Collected Poems. Misidentified by critics as the invention of a ‘supremely subjective romanticism’, these poems were composed at a moment of great philosophical curiosity and artistic ambition. Through Read’s contribution to an evolving ‘language of non-vocal signs’, his vocalizations on behalf of abstract art and his vital and incessant experiment in the realm between poetry and painting, these poems were to contribute to a stirring of the ‘drift’ of modern poetry in post-war Britain.

Download a free e-print of the article from the link below:

http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Ve5PFbWnzegytktW6tcY/full

In the early springtime of 1959 a curious instance occurred across the pages of the literary magazine Encounter.  Poetic utterances of a peculiar nature, Herbert Read’s ‘Vocal Avowals’ were announced with no more than the sequence title and a fragmented prefatory paragraph ‘Notes for a Preface’, that offered a small number of his own pithy single line reflections as well as quotations from sources as culturally diverse as Mallarmé, Elizabeth Sewell, and P. M. Møller. Provided as a means of explanation for his new radical poetic, this list of short declarative statements volunteered a framework by which Herbert Read’s ensuing ‘abstract’ verses may be read. ‘You don’t write sonnets with ideas, but with words,’ Read intones through Mallarmé.
There is so little written about this odd moment in the poetic industry of Read’s later years for it to be particularly compelling. This paper will approach this late moment in Read’s literary career, misidentified by critics as the invention of a ‘supremely subjective romanticism’, as a moment of great curiosity and artistic ambition.