Herbert Read: The Freedom of the Artist (1943)

In this essay, originally published in The Politics of the Unpolitical (London: Routledge, 1943), later reprinted in To Hell With Culture (New York: Schocken Books, 1963), Herbert Read argues for an “experimental"’ attitude toward art, emphasizing the need for artistic freedom. Read saw art as liberating but recognized that such liberation cannot be fully achieved within contemporary society, hence his call to transform society so that the artist in everyone can be broughtforth.

MODERN ART HAS BROKEN THROUGH the artificial boundaries and limitations which we owe to a one-sided and prejudiced view ofthe human personality... [TJhere is not one type of art to which all types of men should conform, but as many types of art as there are types of men... [EJach type of art is the legitimate expression of a type of mental personality... [RJealism and idealism, expressionism and constructivism are all natural phenomena, and the warring schools into which men divide themselves are merely the products of ignorance and prejudice. A true eclecticism can and should enjoy all the manifestations of the creative impulse in man.

Ifwe could imagine a society in which each individual pursued his course in independence, happily producing what he wished to produce without interference from his neighbours, then in such a community each type of artist could express himself in the manner which he found most apt. Constructivists and superrealists, realists and expressionists, could live and work side by side in perfect amity. I do not suggest that such a community ofindividuals is too idealistic to contemplate; it is, in fact, the ideal towards which we should aim. But actually, here and now, we live in communities of a very different character. All the various societies which together make up modern civilization are in fact highly organized and complex, and according to their type of organization they encourage a particular type of art, or even discourage all types of art...

The libertarian attitude is essentially an experimental attitude... [ When) a libertarian society openly recognizes the existence of distinct types of personality, and the necessity for these types to express themselves artistically, it will relegate artistic groups that pride themselves upon refusing to admit incompatible styles to the obscurity which is already the fate of similar groups in science. Any kind of exclusiveness or intolerance is just as opposed to the principles of liberty as social exclusiveness or political intolerance. In this respect art, and all cultural modes of expression, are of exactly the same status as political opinions...

It is. .. upon personal happiness that the future of art depends. But by ‘happiness’ I do not mean that state of eupeptic contentment which is actually of all states of mind the one least favourable to the production of a work of art. Happiness, in the field of art, means work: the capacity and ability to create something near the heart’s desire. The happiness is not in the possession of the thing created, but in the act of creating it. It is the thesis so often and so rightly defended by Eric Gill—the thesis ‘that human culture is the natural product of human living, and that human living is naturally and chiefly a matter of human working; that leisure is in its essence recreative, that the object of recreation is to fit us for living, that we may rejoice as a giant to run the course.’ We make a table and call it work; we make a picture and call it art ifwe mean to sell the picture, recreation ifwe make it for our own amusement. But there is really no distinction: the art is not determined by the purpose of the thing we make, but by its inherent qualities, the qualities with which the artist has endowed it; and the pleasure of art comes from the act of creating these and, in a secondary and stimulating way, from the mental act of re-creating them in contemplation. What I wish to prevent is any narrow conception either of the artist or of the work of art. Every human being is potentially an artist, and this potentiality is of considerable social significance. The individual and society are the opposite poles of a very complex relationship. The individual is anti-social at the time of birth—observe the early days of any baby. He only becomes social by a painful process of adaptation, during which he acquires what we call, paradoxically, his personality, but actually that compromise character which is the result of subordinating personality to the prevalent conception of social normality. The psychological ills from which human beings suffer are a product of this compromise, or maladjustment. What becomes more and more certain is that these ills can to a large extent be avoided by the practice of an art. The people who make things—I have no evidence beyond my own observation—seem to be less liable to nervous break downs, and one ofthe recognized forms of treatment for mental diseases is known as ‘occupational therapy.’ No one would suggest that the function of art is merely to keep people healthy; but it has its subjective effect. The artist not only creates an object external to himself: in doing so he also vitally reorganizes the balance of impulses within himself.

Our glance at the social function of art therefore reinforces the libertarian conception of art. All types of art are not merely permissible, but desirable. The needs of society comprise, not only the outward structure of a world to live in, but also the inward structure of a mind capable of enjoying life. We must therefore search for methods of encouraging the artist—the artist latent in each one of us...

Whether the wholly harmonious mind exists—the mind equally balanced between thought and feeling, between intuition and sensation—is perhaps doubtful, but surely that is the ideal towards which we ought to strive. Only such a mind can appreciate the fullness and richness of life. If we come to the conclusion that this complete and harmonious being cannot exist in our modern form of society, then our aim should be to change that form of society until such a life becomes possible. In this great aim, in which the energies ofhumanity will be absorbed for centuries to come, a right understanding of the nature of art and of the function of the artist is fundamental.