Black Arts, Ruined Cathedrals, and the Grave in Engraving

Ruskin and the Fatal Excess of Art

Bibliographic Data

ID12411705
AuthorsJonah Siegel (0000-0003-0798-2812, Harvard University Press, corresponding author)
Year1999
Volume27
Issue2
Pages395-417
Publication date1999-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueVictorian Literature and Culture (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1060-1503 • E-ISSN: 1470-1553
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s1060150399272038
OpenAlexW2105845154
LanguageEN
Citations received2

T O SPEAK ABOUT JOHN RUSKIN’S anxious figures for engraved reproduction is to speak about his troubled relationship to a modernity in which excess and impermanence present complex and interrelated challenges. The ruined cathedral in my title occurs in lectures Ruskin delivered in 1857, and published the same year as The Political Economy of Art. Invited to speak at Manchester on the occasion of the Art-Treasures Exhibition, at the height of his fame as a critic, Ruskin responded to the moment with two lectures challenging much that the exhibition stood for. He offered the following apocalyptic description of the situation of art away from the self-congratulating festival. It is worth considering this passage — at once about art and about the responsibility for its blighting — in relation to the immense temporary structure built to house the Art-Treasures Exhibition (Figure 9)

Archaeology · Art · Art history · Decorative arts · Exhibition · History of art · Impermanence · Modernity · Relation (database · Sculpture · The arts · Visual arts · Visual arts education · Historical Art and Culture Studies · History · Modernist Literature and Criticism · Philosophy · Travel Writing and Literature · Architecture

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