Will works of the imagination ever regain the power they once had to challenge and mould society and the individual? This was the question posed by Edgar Wind's influential Reith Lectures delivered in 1960 and later expanded into his book Art and Anarchy. The book examines the various forces that have fashioned the modern view of the art, from mechanization and fear of intellect to connoisseurship and—perhaps the fundamental weakness of our age—the dispassionate acceptance of art. In the course of his discussion, Wind surveyed a wide range of topics in the history of painting, literature, music, and the plastic arts from the Renaissance to modern times.

EDGAR WIND was born in Berlin, Germany. He was the first professor of art history at Oxford.

JOHN BAYLEY is a Warton Professor of English at Oxford.

"Brilliant and profoundly interesting." —Clive Bell

"The lectures have been amplified by a series of notes that are as long as the text, and these notes display not only an unrivalled erudition, which we would expect from such a distinguished scholar, but many illuminating insights into the philosophy and psychology of art." —Herbert Read

"A small book which contains as much essential matter on the purposes, successes, and failures of modern art as anything written since Ruskin." —Alan Pryce

"Brilliant and profoundly interesting." —Clive Bell

"The lectures have been amplified by a series of notes that are as long as the text, and these notes display not only an unrivalled erudition, which we would expect from such a distinguished scholar, but many illuminating insights into the philosophy and psychology of art." —Herbert Read

"A small book which contains as much essential matter on the purposes, successes, and failures of modern art as anything written since Ruskin." —Alan Pryce