As Herbert Read noted in the introduction to The hell with culture, this series of essays published as World War II progressed, historical moment in which art as a social phenomenon was widely discussed, as well as its role and obligations Ethical artists. Throughout the entire book, the concept of Read about art unfolds in various dimensions and analyzed from different points of view. Al devil with culture, Read conceives art as a phenomenon that exceeds the strictly artistic level, and get involved with politics and the economy.
"Historically speaking, we can only identify a civilization for art that has bequeathed subject to the test of time, civilizations are reduced to their artistic works. Otherwise seems eaten by the" rot. Even the most remote periods of history we become tangible reality in a fragment of bone or carved on a cave drawing. Cities and fertile plains disappear, but buried in the ruins, buried in tombs and sanctuaries, we found a glass, a jewel, a few coins, which speak in a clear voice and tell us the nature of the lost civilization. We do not say, simply, that this or that other people worshiped the sun, they fought their battles in tanks, they believed in the resurrection of the dead. It tells us something more, because these are accessories that can find data from other sources. Works of art speak more directly because, in form and style, give us an idea of ​​refinement that possessed a civilization. "