ABSTRACT
The English art educator and poet Herbert Read advocated that education should create artists in the sense of 'people efficient in the various modes of expression'. In the ensuing half-century his Platonic vision of a fundamentally aesthetic education, harmonising individuality within social unity, has flared like a beacon to many educators. The greatest marvel of the world is human individuality, and perhaps its most puzzling aspect is that certain individuals accomplish remarkable things of which others appear incapable. This puzzle is most deeply evident in the context of the arts, whose images affect and even dominate daily existence: how and why artists present their particular kinds of images is a matter of much speculation and confusion. Many individuals who show exceptional skill in artistic creation do seem to have been empowered from the beginning, as though (and according to the most enduringly popular notion) they have been specially selected and equipped prior to birth.
