This book presents an aesthetic of sculptural art, which has too often submitted to the rule of architecture and painting. Herbert Read emphasizes the essential and autonomous nature of sculpture—“Form in its full spatial completeness,” in the words of British sculptor Henry Moore. The Art of Sculpture provides historical support and theoretical rigor to this conception. Along the way, this incisive and wide-ranging book takes readers on a breathtaking tour of great works of sculpture from prehistoric times to the modern era.
Sir Herbert Read (1893–1968) was renowned as a poet and a writer on the visual arts, literature, and education. His many books include A Concise History of Modern Painting, Art Now, Art and Society, and Icon and Idea.
"Concerned with the qualities which exist in uniquely sculptural objects, the author wends his way, without chronological restrictions, through the history of sculpture, bringing to bear considerable documentation from the writings of artists and philosophers in support of his views."—Yale Review
"Thoroughly erudite and thoroughly convincing. . . . A book which should lead to a thorough reappraisal of the role of sculpture in the trinity of the major arts."—Virginia Quarterly
"Few critics write history at all, but this book is very good history. Within its field it is a systematic and almost invariably exact record. As a history, it will surely remain more useful to more people than anything else on the subject."—Lawrence Gowing, New Statesman
