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

—  Herbert Read

Source: Collected Poems (1966), p. 20

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The work of art … is an instrument for tilling the human psyche, that it may continue to yield a harvest of vital beaut…" by Herbert Read?
Herbert Read photo
Herbert Read 42
English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art 1893–1968

Related quotes

Alfred North Whitehead photo

“The human body is an instrument for the production of art in the life of the human soul.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

Source: 1930s, Adventures of Ideas (1933), p. 349.

“Now as before it is the vulgar and the vital and the possibility of its transformation into the beautiful which continues to challenge and fascinate me… Or perhaps the subject of my art is like the definition of humor — emotional pain remembered in tranquillity.”

Grace Hartigan (1922–2008) American artist

Statement to World Artists : 1950-1980 as quoted n "Grace Hartigan, 86, Abstract Painter, Dies" in The New York Times (18 November 2008)
Unsourced variant: I have found "my subject", it concerns that which is vital and vulgar in American life and the possibility of its transcendence into the beautiful.

John Muir photo

“No portion of the world is so barren as not to yield a rich and precious harvest of divine truth.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

"Arctic Coal Mines — The Diomede Bay Islands", San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin (part 18 of 21 part series "Cruise of the Corwin") dated 25 August 1881, published 25 October 1881; reprinted in The Cruise of the Corwin http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/cruise_of_the_corwin/default.aspx (1917), chapter 17: Meeting the Point Barrow Expedition
1880s

Newton Lee photo
Eleanor Roosevelt photo

“Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States
Maurice Denis photo
Mary Wollstonecraft photo
Nikola Tesla photo
Anish Kapoor photo

“Art is gushing hot bile on the fields and harvesting the looks of nasty dwarfs.”

Günter Brus (1938) Austrian artist

Source: Nervous Stillness on the Horizon (2006), P. 216 (2003)

Related topics