From poverty and a Yorkshire orphanage, Herbert Read went on to become the most significant cultural critic to come out of England in the twentieth century.

Between 1940 and 1960 he was the most well-respected writer on modernist art in the English language, effectively defining the movement during that period. He was a major art theorist and writer on literature, and a key figure in anarchist politics.

He was a leading figure in many Eureopan art movements, including Constructivism and Surrealism, and was one of the first English writers to embrace the Existentialist theories of Jean-Paul Sartre. Remarkably Read was once accused by the leading English modernist, Percy Wyndham Lewis, of being too radical in his artistic tastes.

Read was also a notable poet of the First World War, and in later years helped to found numerous art organisations, including the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London. And yet, after his death in 1968, he became an almost forgotten figure in art and cultural studies, eclipsed by later figures such as Clement Greenberg and Raymond Williams.

In this book sixteen of the world's leading writers on modernist cultural history look at Read's work again, focusing on his anarchist political beliefs, his work on art and literature, and his own creative writings. They place him in the context of twentieth century cultural life, and offer startling explanations for his neglect by later writers on modernism.

The book is very well illustrated in full colour, with images of works by many of the artists Read championed.

Alfred Orage was one of the most significant figures in the modernist art and literary world of early twentieth century Britain. As co-founder of the Leeds Arts Club in 1903 he helped to introduce European modernism to Britain, and this continued as he became the editor of the most widely read art and literary journal of the time, The New Age. Friedrich Nietzsche was central to Orage's thinking, and in this little book he sought to introduce the German philosopher to a sometimes skeptical British public. Yet in doing so he placed his own spin on Nietzsche's work, forming a view of Nietzsche that was to influence a generation of art and literary figures, including Herbert Read and Clement Greenberg.

In 2008 four artists and an art critic gathered together in the northern English seaside town of Scarborough to stage an exhibition that would challenge the dominant mainstream British art world. Entitled 'scarborough realists now' (note the lower case) the exhibition was a deliberate attack on the mainstream metropolitan art world, dominated at the time by neo-conceptual artists and critics who were actively hostile to painting. Against this they succeeded in staging a seminal exhibition of radical contemporary realist painting. As the critic Michael Paraskos argues in a new essay, written to accompany this reissue of the original catalogue, the Scarborough exhibition was intended to celebrate realist painting: but the artists were also looking beyond the realist agenda, foreseeing a time when realist painting itself, and particularly Photorealist painting, would also seem dull, mainstream and in need of revitalisation. Drawing on anarchist art theory, Paraskos explains that whilst each of the artists was producing realist art at the time of the show as a necessary act of resistance against conceptualism, realism and Photorealism were never seen as the ultimate goal. Already these artists were developing individual agendas for their work that would take them beyond realism.

The Aphorisms of Irsee is a collection of definitive statements on the nature of art by the artist Clive Head and the writer Michael Paraskos. The aphorisms were formulated whilst Head and Paraskos were teaching at a summer art camp in Irsee, southern Germany. Sometimes controversial, often funny, the aphorisms are designed to challenge our understanding of art by defining its essential characteristics. Head and Paraskos do this not only in terms of the question "what is art?" but the equally important question, "what are the conditions in which art can appear?" With a new introduction for the third edition by Michael Paraskos, the Aphorisms of Irsee are radical, challenging and thought provoking, and a joy to read. They set out a new agenda for art in the twenty-first century.

Michael Paraskos is one of the new generation of art critics who are redefining the way we make and see art in the twenty-first century. He is a leading figure in the New Aesthetics movement, an informal grouping of artists and writers who emphasise the physical and material nature of art above its conceptual meaning. In Regeneration Paraskos puts forward an argument for an aesthetic framework for art which does not look back to the academic aesthetics of previous centuries, but is rooted in the physical and material nature of how artists actually make art. By doing this, he suggests, an art theory based on essential nature of art can come into existence, rather than a repetition of futile attempts to discuss art as if it is music, or poetry, or linguistics, or visual politics. Art is art, he suggests, and it does not need to borrow theories from other human activities to justify its existence. But Regeneration is not simply a discussion of art theory. It is a record of a highly personal, and sometimes painful, journey into discovering the true nature of art. Originally intended for private distribution only to trusted friends in the art world, Regeneration offers a rare glimpse into the experiences that lead art theorists and critics to think, say and do the things they do.

A collection of essays to celebrate the seventy-fifth birthday of the artist Stass Paraskos. Born into a peasant family in Cyprus in 1933, Paraskos went to England to work as a waiter in a Greek restaurant. There he met a group of artists from Leeds College of Art who persuaded him to join their college. Paraskos never looked back, going on to be a celebrated artist and educator. He became Head of Painting at the University for Creative Arts, and founder of the Cyprus College of Art, the first art college in his homeland of Cyprus. This book places Paraskos in context and deals with major events in his life, including the notorious trial in Leeds, in 1966, when he was prosecuted for obscenity following an exhibition of his paintings.