A sufficient flow of vital ideas.... Herbert Read and the flow of ideas from the Leeds Art Club to the ICA

This chapter uses explores the relationship between the public sphere and cultural institutions in developing, honing and disseminating an appropriate language to enable sophisticated and conceptually rigorous analysis of the visual cultures of contemporary life. Herbert Read initially used print media -including small printed booklets, books and journals (for instance The Listener) and realised the potential of the radio to enable artists and architects themselves to speak. Finally, he worked with art institutions (including most famously and successfully the ICA, London) to provide places not only for the showing of contemporary culture but, most crucially, as a public space for the discussion of ideas associated with the modern movement.