from Herbert Read

 

2010

"...the Greeks were wiser than we, and their belief, which always seems so paradoxical to us, that beauty is moral goodness, is really a simple truth. The only sin is ugliness, and if we believed this with all our being, all other activities of the human spirit could be left to take care of themselves. That is why I believe that art is so much more significant than either economics or philosophy. It is the direct measure of man's spiritual vision. When that vision is communal, it becomes a religion, and the vitality of art throughout the greater part of history is closely bound up with some form of religion. But, gradually, as I have already pointed out, for the last two or three centuries that bond has been getting looser, and there does not seem to be any immediate promise of a new contact being established."


                                            -- Herbert Read
                                            The Meaning of Art, page 190

                                            Pelican Books

                                            London, 1950