My most recent dose of Art Criticism was a collection of essays by the late Herbert Read an anarchist and fervent supporter of the avant garde during the 1930's. Covering a wide range of topics from the inability of Democracy to be wholly integrated within the Capitalist superpowers of the West, to the role of pornography within art, Read consistently returns to one aim: to both define the role of Art and the artist within society.
Read at once challenges all forms of authority whether "democratic" or totalitarian and calls for liberty and a whole hearted pursuit of the arts which he defines as anything created with aesthetics and function in mind with a clear Ruskinian ideology at the heart of his writing.
Written shortly after an intense period of political turmoil, his work is all the more relevant to our own economic and political crisis in which the role of art and the artist is yet to be determined. Many of his warnings against a dogged pursuit of economic gain eerily stand, as a warning not heeded.
All in all Read's clarity of expression and literary flare, remind one not only to question one's own existence and the forces that govern it, but also maintain an air of optimism in humanity's ability to progress and combat adversity through a pursuit of the arts and an unconscious universal aestheticism in order to strive for better standard of living.
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