Source: 1940 - 1950, The Plasmic Image 2. 1943-1945, p. 127
“The revolutionary artist is born into a world of clichés, of stale images and signs which no longer pierce the consciousness to express reality. He therefore invents new symbols, perhaps a whole new symbolic system.”
The Philosophy of Modern Art: Collected Essays (1971).
Other Quotes
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Herbert Read 42
English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art 1893–1968Related quotes

1915 - 1925, Suprematism' in World Reconstruction (1920)

Source: The Courage to Create (1975), Ch. 1 : The Courage to Create, p. 22
Source: Star Maker (1937), Chapter XIII: The Beginning and the End; 3. The Supreme Moment and After (p. 161)

“Reality must be expressed by a physical symbol.”
Bahai lecture, New York, October 30, 1951; as quoted in Abstract Expressionist Painting in America, W.C, Seitz, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1983, p. 10
1950's

"The Calendar's New Clothes," New York Times (30 December 1999)

Source: The Courage to Create (1975), Ch. 4 : Creativity and the Encounter, p. 91
Context: Symbol and myth do bring into awareness infantile, archaic dreads and similar primitive psychic content. This is their regressive aspect. But they also bring out new meaning, new forms, and disclose a reality that was literally not present before, a reality that is not merely subjective but has a second pole which is outside ourselves. This is the progressive side of symbol and myth. This aspect points ahead. It is integrative. It is a progressive revealing of structure in our relation to nature and our own existence, as the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur so well states. It is a road to universals beyond discrete personal experience.