254: Art

For all intents and purposes, Ruskin began his authorial life as an art critic with the publication of the first volume of Modern Painters series in 1843 (he was 24; there would be five volumes in the series by the time the last volume printed in 1860). Although, in later decades, he was to devote the bulk of his attention to writing about how to better society and ameliorate the suffering of its millions, he never relinquished his love of art and belief that the presence of the best of it in our own lives was not only an unending source of pleasure, but possessed the capacity to raise us to higher levels of consciousness. Until his end in 1900, the reader of his publications would encounter passages highlighting the beauty of a particular painting or sculpture or underscoring the importance of a particular artist.

It is this love of art that has brought this post into being. Its plan is simple, I have selected a number of Ruskin’s loveliest statements about the nature and importance of art and illustrated these with selections from his drawings (which, happily, are numerous and, almost invariably, beautiful) and a few images from the history of art (most of which he loved). My thought is that you might read a particular passage (all are brief) and then take a few moments to look at the accompanying illustration to test his argument. As we progress, we shall encounter, intermixing with his views on the significance of art and his conviction that everything in nature, properly perceived, with his always present concern for the well-being of society and humanity, concerns the power and sincerity of which, from his first words to his last, set off his genius in the history of Western civilization.

The first short passage is taken from a small book, The Two Paths (1857), a collection of lectures stressing his view that the modern world was at a critical juncture, at a point where a choice had to be made between traveling down a path which would lead to health and well-being and an alternative (which, unfortunately, we were already well-down) which would lead inevitably to destruction and unhappiness. The picture following is his depiction of a fallen oak leaf in (this!) the penultimate season of the year.

I have had but one steady aim in all I have ever tried to teach: namely, to declare that whatever was great in human art is the expression of man’s delight in God’s work.

The entire vitality of Art depends upon its being either full of truth or full of use, and that, however, wonderful, or impressive it may be in itself, it must yet be of inferior kind, and tend to deeper inferiority, unless it has clearly one of these main objects – either to state a true thing or adorn a serviceable one. It must never exist alone – never for itself; it exists rightly only when it is the means to knowledge or the grace of agency for life.

In 1869, he was appointed the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at his alma mater, Oxford University. To fulfill his duties he began writing a series of lectures designed to inform and instruct his students in the skills they would need not only to look at art properly but appreciate and absorb the lessons it possessed for helping them grasp what was beautiful and worth preserving. Frequently he illustrated his lectures with drawings of his own, such as the one below of the first floor colonnade of the Ducal Palace in Venice. The passage above is drawn from one of his lectures on art.

The next passage–also from The Two Paths–highlights two of his fundamental convictions: first, that it is only by observing and representing Nature as it is that we can come to understand the world rightly; and, second, that, in its essence. art is didactic, is always in the service of teaching us something of import and that (modern artists take note!) the very notion of “art for its own sake,” is anathema. The illustration is his watercolor of an wild rose branch blossoming in spring.

Art, followed as such, and for its own sake, irrespective of the interpretation of Nature by it, is destructive of whatever is best and noblest in humanity. But Nature, however simply observed, or imperfectly known is, in the degree of the affection felt for it, protective and helpful in all that is noblest in humanity.

This is the great Enigma of Art History: you must not follow art without pleasure–nor must you follow it for the sake of pleasure. And the solution of this enigma lies simply in this fact: that wherever art has been followed only for the sake of luxury or delight it has contributed, and largely contributed, to bring about the destruction of the nation practicing it. But, wherever art has been used also to teach any truth, or supposed truth – religious, moral, or natural –there it has elevated the nation practicing it, and itself with he nation.

The passage above comes from Ruskin’s “Cambridge Address” of the late 1860s. It reprises some themes we have already encountered and underscores his argument that the perpetual task of art is to help us find our way through life. The illustration is of the famous painting, “Madonna, Child, and Four Saints” in the Church of the Frari in Venice, a painting by Giovanni Bellini (1507), which Ruskin regarded as one of the greatest in the world (which, for him, was saying something). (Don’t miss the piercing stare of the saint in the right panel, a look directed at all of us which communicates volumes – he is holding one! – reminding us about what is most important in life.

I leave the last quotation and illustration (of Michelangelo’s “David” in Florence, perhaps the most famous sculpture in the world, for your consideration.

Whatever Art is practiced for its own sake, and the delight of the workman is in what he does and produces instead of what he interprets or exhibits, there is an influence of the most fatal kind on brain and heart; and it issues, if long pursued, in the destruction of both intellectual power and moral principle. Whereas art devoted humbly and forgetfully to the clear statement and record of the facts of the universe, is always helpful and beneficent to mankind–full of comfort, strength, and salvation.

Until next time, please do continue well out there!

🙂

Jim

Thanks to Jonathan Chiswell Jones for helping me identify one of Ruskin’s drawings accurately.