Ruskin

By George P. Landow

Book Overview

The great Victorian critic of art and society, John Ruskin did much to popularize high art and bring it to the masses. A brilliant theorist and practical critic of realism, he also produced the finest nineteenth-century discussions of fantasy, the grotesque, and pictorial symbolism. George Landow offers a new approach to Ruskin which presents him as an interpreter not only of paintings, poems, and buildings, but also of social issues such as the discontent of the working classes.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0192876031
• ISBN13: 9780192876034
• Release Date: May 1985
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 112 Pages
• Weight: 0.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 4.4" x 7.0"

Customer Reviews

An excellent introduction to the Ruskin way of seeing

This book opens with a short biography of Ruskin, without going into in detail the difficulties of his life. It focuses on his way of seeing things, his path in perception in Art and Social Criticism. Landow claims that Ruskin thought by seeing and in this seeing also saw the symbolical and mythological meanings he valued in Art. Landow discusses Ruskin's championing and promoting of the work of J.M. Turner. He often cites that complicated Ruskin prose style which supposedly influenced among others Proust. He outlines Ruskin's social thought, his concern for the poor and presents Ruskin's unique conception of economics. For Ruskin wealth was not measured in money or possessions but ' fullness of life'. And Ruskin believed the great deprivation and social evil was not simply in material poverty but in loss of opportunity for cultural and spiritual enrichment. Ruskin is a visionary of Art and Social Reality, who saw both with the eyes of Tradition and with his own radical ideals of how to better reconstruct the world. Landow also indicates the very great influence of Ruskin in Victorian thought. As one who does not know Ruskin's work that well I felt this work gave me a clear idea of the main purpose and direction of a major nineteenth - century creative visionary.