DOCSLIB.ORG

Bertrand Russell on Aesthetics 51

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Bertrand Russell on Aesthetics 51 Bertrand Russell on Aesthetics CARL SPADONI Introduction "What is your attitude toward art today?" "I have no view about art today." 1 That is Bertrand Russell's reply when he was asked in 1929 to comment on modern art. Itis a confession ofignorance and not false modesty. In contrast to his profound contributions to other areas of philosophy, he made no major attempt to answer the fundamental questions of aesthetics­ questions such as: What is a work ofart? Whatis the nature ofbeauty? What constitutes an aesthetic experience? What are the nature, function and justification ofartistic criticism? When we examine Russell's correspondence of the 1950S and 1960s on this subject, we encounter statements such as the following: I doubt whether I shall have an opinion of any value as regards your essay on beauty, for beauty is a subject about which I have never had any views whatever. 2 I am not sufficiently competent to make judgments on painting.... I feel I cannot sponsor or publicly promote paintings because I do not have a professional knowledge ofthe field. 3 I have no views whatsoever in connection with the graphic arts.... The philosophy ofart is a subject which I have not studied, so that any views expressed by me would be oflittle value. 4 49 50 Carl Spadoni Bertrand Russell on Aesthetics 51 You ask why I have not written on the subject of painting. The chief "good" is to be interpreted subjectively as an attempt to universalize our reason is that I suffer from an inadequate appreciation of pictures. I get desires. very great delight from music and also from architecture, but for some It may appear that I have backed myself into a corner. If Russell said reason I get much less from painting and sculpture. This inability makes nothing significant about aesthetics, then a commentator can hardly provide me unable to form any judgment from the reproduction of the picture enlightenment on his views. To paraphrase Wittgenstein, what Russell has which you call my picture. This is in no way personal to your work, but not spoken about we must pass over in silence. But, in fact, Russell made applies to abstract art in general. In spite of this I find it extremely several attempts to understand aesthetic experience. The best known at­ interesting that your work should be influenced by consideration of the tempt occurred around Christmas 1902 when with his first wife, Alys (nee sort ofabstract relations with which my work deals, which makes me all Pearsall Smith), he visited her sister, Mary, and her husband, the art critic the more deeply regret my aesthetic blind spot.s Bernard Berenson, at their villa, I Tatti, in Settignano on the outskirts of Florence. No longer in love with Alys and beset by difficulties in his work on In all these excerpts Russell apologizes for his inability to understand the foundations of mathematics, Russell had turned to imaginative and aesthetic experience related to the visual arts. confessional writings as a form of catharsis, completing "The Free Man's Of course one can find instances in his life when he stated his opinion Worship" at I Tatti. "The house has been furnished by Berenson with about the merits of a particular work of art. For example, when The exquisite taste", Russell told his good friend, the classicist Gilbert Murray; Problems ofPhilosophy was re-issued in paperback in 1967, Oxford Univer­ "it has some very good pictures, and a most absorbing library. But the sity Press suggested that Feliks Topolski's spidery sketch ofRussell should business ofexisting beautifully, except when it is hereditary, always slightly be reproduced on the front cover of the book. Russell was horrified by the shocks my Puritan soul". 9 Raised in the spartan atmosphere of Pembroke prospect, and he completely rejected the suggestion. 6 But, as a philosopher, Lodge under the watchful care of his paternal grandmother and with the Russell gave no systematic treatment to the problems ofaesthetics. There is social conscience of the Russell family tradition, Russell found Berenson's only one letter that I know of in which his explanation is not apologetic in pursuit ofluxury repugnant. What divided the two men ultimately however character. was Russell's frank admission. "In my heart the whole business about art is external to me", he confided to Berenson. "I believe it with my intellect, but It is true that 1 have not written a separate book on the problems of in feeling I am a good British Philistine." I 0 aesthetics. I have never considered this was significantly different in its The reasons for Russell's inability to appreciate the visual arts and for his philosophical importance from problems in ethics and the general ques­ general failure to discuss aesthetic questions are to be found in his intellec­ tion ofvalue statements. As for sense of"beauty", may I refer you to my tual development around the turn ofthe century. During this period he read books Religion and Science, In Praise ofIdleness and my essay "A Free relevant literature on the topic, toured art galleries, arrived at a permanent Man's Worship".7 theory to account for his lack of visual imagination, met Berenson and commented on his work, wrote a couple of essays in which aesthetics is the I will not debate the question whether ethics and aesthetics share com­ primary focus, and was influenced by Lady Ottoline Morrell. Conse­ mon problems which are susceptible to the same methods of analysis for quently, this paper will examine Russell's earliest opinions, reactions, and their solution. Contrary to Russell's claim, the two books and the essay that arguments concerning the nature of aesthetics. The result of this inquiry he refers to scarcely discuss the nature of beauty. Although In Praise of will tell us why he never wrote a book on the subject. Idleness has an essay on the social importance of architecture and another essay with a brief discussion on the role of art in a socialist state, the book actually says nothing about the nature ofbeauty. Russell's celebrated essay, 1 Nature Worship and Ruskin "The Free Man's Worship", does not explicitly develop this theme except for a few rhapsodic lines such as: "from the freedom ofour thoughts springs During his adolescence, Russell was influenced by romantic poetry and the whole world ofart and philosophy, and the vision ofbeauty by which, at literature (primarily Wordsworth, Tennyson and Shelley), and he devel­ last, we half reconquer the reluctant world. But the vision of beauty is oped a keen appreciation of the beauty of nature. II God he interpreted possible only to unfettered contemplation".8 Religion and Science contains pantheistically as a positive, creative force inherent in every aspect of the only the suggestion of a theory; namely, that the word, "beautiful", like universe. In "Greek Exercises", a journal in which he secretly chronicled his 52 Carl Spadoni Bertrand Russell on Aesthetics 53 moral anxieties and religious doubts, Russell recorded in April 1889: "The book is most interesting to me as a study ofmind", Russell remarked in his diary on first reading Modern Painters on 20 May 1890: Herein indeed lies the beauty of nature, and the comfort it can afford when the spirit is vexed with doubt. ... What is the beauty in art, in his mind is so exactly the antitype of the mathematical that I have great painting or sculpture, unless it be the soul that manifests itself in the difficulty in entering into it. He has a certain artistic want ofsturdiness, canvas or the marble? And is not the same true ofnature? Can inanimate which latter I should think must be inseparable from such a stationary speak to animate? Is not rather the soul which is manifested in nature as pursuit as art appears to be, if not retrograde.... Of the purely artistic much more perfect than the soul ofpainter or sculptor, as nature is more parts of the book I can ofcourse say nothing. 14 perfect than art? In human handiwork perfection can never be attained; in nature, perfection appears at every turn, manifesting the perfect soul In his next diary entry on Modern Painters which occurs on 10 June, about of the creator. 12 three weeks later, Russell, however, objected to Ruskin's "theory of suita­ bly combined imperfections resulting in perfection". Russell found the This comfortable world-view was shattered after Russell read Mill on the theory implausible and he offered several counterexamples to it-the First Cause argument. Notwithstanding the loss of religious belief, he beauty of a face or a landscape, he contended, is marred as a whole if any retained throughout his life a profound appreciation ofthe beauty ofnature. individual feature is ugly. Ruskin's theory implies that "a simple gradation The fragrance and colours of wild flowers, the sea and the nightwind never of colour without form, could not be beautiful", Russell claimed. IS But, is failed to stir his imagination and memory, to heighten his perception ofand not the blue ofan evening sky or the sea at rest beautiful, Russell qustioned? wonder at the non-human world. In "Greek Exercises", nature is regarded When he finished reading volume two ofModern Painters on 16 June 1890, by Russell as the perfect work of art, and human handiwork is reckoned he criticized the style for not being as good as Ruskin's later books such as second-rate. This prejudice remained with Russell because he was a poor Sesame and Lilies. He was quite surprised that Modern Painters had sus­ visualizer. Aesthetic judgment in painting and sculpture usually requires a tained his interest and reversed his earlier opinion that Ruskin's reasoning leap in the imagination from the object in its natural setting to its represen­ was deficient.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} on Art and Life by John Ruskin History of the Victorian Art Critic and Writer John Ruskin
    Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} On Art and Life by John Ruskin History of the Victorian Art Critic and Writer John Ruskin. Ruskin200.com is no longer available here. Please visit ruskinprize.co.uk/manchester instead. Who Was John Ruskin? John Ruskin was undoubtedly a fascinating character, one of the most famous art critics of the Victorian era. His many talents included philosophy, philanthropy, and writing. His books spanned many genres, including geology, myths, and literature. Ruskin's Personal Life. Ruskin had a complex personality and today would be described as bipolar, as he often suffered bouts of depression. For long periods, the state of his mental health rendered him powerless to do anything. His first relationship was a failure. He was said to be disgusted by his wife's body, leading to a divorce on the grounds of consummation not having happened. A second love affair was marred by tragedy as the object of his affections died of anorexia at the age of 27. Ruskin's Books. A prolific writer, Ruskin, published several important works on a great many subjects. His first volume of Modern Painters was a very influential piece, written when he was only 24. His alternative views on popular artists brought him to the attention of the art establishment. The Stones of Venice was published in 1851 and discussed Ruskin's love of Venice and its architecture. His beliefs that the classical style represented a need to control civilisation are still studied today. There is much to learn about John Ruskin, and there is a museum dedicated to him, located in the Lake District.
    [Show full text]
  • Urban Pastorals
    Urban Pastorals By Clive Wilmer Worple Press When I heard Clive Wilmer read his Urban Pastorals last Monday evening in the Cambridge University Library I was moved. There was a quiet solemnity about the delivery but it was tinged with wistfulness and a gentle wry humour that had echoes of Alan Bennett talking of his Yorkshire childhood. Peter Carpenter’s Worple Press has published these short pieces of nostalgic insight into a childhood spent in the South London of Tooting Bec and I recommend everyone to get a copy. The Press is based at Achill Sound, 2b Dry Hill Road, Tonbridge, Kent TN9 1LX and is well-known for excellent productions (including volumes by Iain Sinclair). When D.W. Harding wrote his seminal essay on nostalgia for the first issue of F.R. Leavis’s Quarterly Review, Scrutiny, in 1932 he referred to ‘simple homesickness’ being ‘an aspect of social life’ where the home that one yearns for ‘comprises the whole familiar framework—objects and institutions as well as people—within which one lives and in dealing with which one possesses established habits and sentiments.’ It is an established truth that no man is the author of himself and in moments of clarity, and humility, we can recognise how much we are the result of everything that has happened to us. This awareness is, of course, a far cry from some regressive tendencies that can be bound up within the world of nostalgia: ‘regressive because the ideal period seems to have been free from difficulties that have to be met in the present, and nostalgic because the difficulties of the present are seldom unrelated to the difficulty of living with an uncongenial group.’ (Harding) Clive Wilmer’s beautifully poised writing never runs the danger of forfeiting its tone of recognition: the past’s importance is registered precisely because it is the past.
    [Show full text]
  • The Labour Party and the Idea of Citizenship, C. 193 1-1951
    The Labour Party and the Idea of Citizenship, c. 193 1-1951 ABIGAIL LOUISA BEACH University College London Thesis presented for the degree of PhD University of London June 1996 I. ABSTRACT This thesis examines the development and articulation of ideas of citizenship by the Labour Party and its sympathizers in academia and the professions. Setting this analysis within the context of key policy debates the study explores how ideas of citizenship shaped critiques of the relationships between central government and local government, voluntary groups and the individual. Present historiographical orthodoxy has skewed our understanding of Labour's attitude to society and the state, overemphasising the collectivist nature and centralising intentions of the Labour party, while underplaying other important ideological trends within the party. In particular, historical analyses which stress the party's commitment from the 1930s to achieving the transition to socialism through a strategy of planning, (of industrial development, production, investment, and so on), have generally concluded that the party based its programme on a centralised, expert-driven state, with control removed from the grasp of the ordinary people. The re-evaluation developed here questions this analysis and, fundamentally, seeks to loosen the almost overwhelming concentration on the mechanisms chosen by the Labour for the implementation of policy. It focuses instead on the discussion of ideas that lay behind these policies and points to the variety of opinions on the meaning and implications of social and economic planning that surfaced in the mid-twentieth century Labour party. In particular, it reveals considerable interest in the development of an active and participatory citizenship among socialist thinkers and politicians, themes which have hitherto largely been seen as missing elements in the ideas of the interwar and immediate postwar Labour party.
    [Show full text]
  • Article BRTLT
    A SPECTRAL TURN AROUND VENICE By Luke Jones I spent several days, during a recent trip to Venice, in conversation with a ghost. The writer and critic John Ruskin became my spectral guide, and his commentary on the buildings that we visited transformed my experience of those spaces. What follows is an account of my time with him. This ‘conversation’, if it were a conceit on my part, had the aim of finding a productive way of addressing his difficult, extraordinary, vast Stones of Venice in light of the deeply, but incompletely, felt affection which many have for it. The book is a history of Venice as a sort of epic tragedy narrated by its buildings, and it is simultaneously a polemic against the previous three hundred years of European architecture, directed particularly against London, and proposing a revolution in architectural style. It is commonly viewed as a heroic, rousing failure. Kenneth Clark said of it that ‘even now […], when the cause it advocates is dead, we cannot read it without a thrill, without a sudden resolution to reform the world’ (Clark 1964, 181), and Colin Amery reveals a typical ambivalence when he writes that ‘the trouble is that Ruskin was wrong […] [yet] we need a voice like his again’ (Amery 2001, viii-ix). The effect of invoking Ruskin in the manner of a haunting is not simply to convey a measure of sympathy for him, as a figure, or his work. Rather, I am trying to approach, however obliquely, the subtle and intriguing way in which Ruskin’s rhetoric, which is concerned with portraying contemporary Venice as a ruin, also starts to reveal within itself the ruin of Ruskin’s ideals.
    [Show full text]
  • The Roots of Ruskin, Florida
    Tampa Bay History Volume 4 Issue 1 Article 3 6-1-1982 Socialism in the Sunshine: The Roots of Ruskin, Florida Lori Robinson Bill De Young Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/tampabayhistory Recommended Citation Robinson, Lori and De Young, Bill (1982) "Socialism in the Sunshine: The Roots of Ruskin, Florida," Tampa Bay History: Vol. 4 : Iss. 1 , Article 3. Available at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/tampabayhistory/vol4/iss1/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Open Access Journals at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Tampa Bay History by an authorized editor of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Robinson and De Young: Socialism in the Sunshine: The Roots of Ruskin, Florida John Ruskin, 1876. Photograph from The Works of John Ruskin. SOCIALISM IN THE SUNSHINE: THE ROOTS OF RUSKIN, FLORIDA by Lori Robinson and Bill De Young Today, Ruskin is a quiet Florida town, known primarily for the sweet, red tomatoes and other farm produce grown in its clay soil. Only a few street names and the name of the town itself remain as vestiges of a dream that brought a small band of settlers to the Florida pinewoods on the sparsely settled eastern shore of Tampa Bay. They were utopians from the North, intellectuals and farmers in search of a new life and a new community. As they cut down the pines from the surrounding turpentine groves and set about building their community, they named its shady but rocky streets after some of the men whose principles they held dear – Carlyle, Bellamy, and Morris.
    [Show full text]
  • Vernacular Revival and Ideology – What’S Left? by Peter Guillery
    Vernacular Revival and Ideology – What’s Left? by Peter Guillery This essay derives from a lecture first given at a Vernacular Architecture Group conference on vernacular revivals in 2015, reprised to generally younger audiences at the Bartlett School of Architecture and the University of Westminster. Its retrospection about vernacular architecture, anonymity, revival and left-wing ideologies was prompted primarily by a bemused awareness of recent advances in self-building. It seemed timely to try to get at how and why certain ideas retain traction. Then, coincidentally, young and old were recombining behind Jeremy Corbyn to reinvigorate Labour, and the self-styled design ‘collective’ Assemble won the Turner Prize. John Ruskin, William Morris, the Arts and Crafts Movement and Romanticism will arise (how could they not?), but only in passing, for a revisionist view of what has come since. It is taken as read that a strong commitment to architectural design as being rooted in labour and everyday or subaltern agency tallied with the emergence of socialism and was an important part of architectural thinking and history in late-19th-century England. This is an attempt to relate that history to the present in a new overview for a new framework. It adopts an unconventional or purist definition of what vernacular means that will clash with many preconceptions. Peter Guillery is an architectural historian and editor for the Survey of London, in the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. He is the author of The Small House in Eighteenth-Century London (2004), and the editor of Built from Below: British Architecture and the Vernacular (2011), and (with David Kroll) Mobilising Housing Histories: Learning from London’s Past (2016).
    [Show full text]
  • Ruskin Unleashed: Towards a Revised Political Economy of Art Or Joy for Ever: How to Use Art to Change the World (And Its Price Beyond the Market)
    Ruskin unleashed: towards a revised political economy of art or Joy for ever: How to use art to change the world (and its price beyond the market) Alistair Hudson Figure 1 The Whitworth, University of Manchester, with advertisements for its exhibition ‘Joy for ever: How to use art to change the world (and its price in the market)’ held from 29 March to 9 June 2019. Photo: author Joy for ever: How to use art to change the world (and its price in the market) was an exhibition held at the Whitworth, University of Manchester, from 29 March to 9 June 2019 (fig. 1). It was held to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the birth of John Ruskin, the British artist, writer, commentator and educationalist, who was the principal voice campaigning throughout the nineteenth century against the ills of an increasingly industrial and dehumanising world. The exhibition also marked the beginning of a new chapter in the history of the Whitworth in a post-Postindustrial era of ecological, political, financial and social crisis. The institution is now seeking to evolve as a museum that is relevant Journal of Art Historiography Number 22 June 2020 Alistair Hudson Ruskin unleashed … or … How to use art to change the world and useful in our context and one that takes an active role in society, promoting art as a tool for social change. With this goal in mind, our aim is to reconnect with our founders’ intentions, to create an institute, art gallery and park that can help realise the full potential of the city and its residents.
    [Show full text]
  • 'The Sancity of Womanhood': John Ruskin and the Medieval Madonna
    Columbus State University CSU ePress Theses and Dissertations Student Publications 2015 'The Sancity Of Womanhood': John Ruskin And The Medieval Madonna Katherine M. Hinzman Follow this and additional works at: https://csuepress.columbusstate.edu/theses_dissertations Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Hinzman, Katherine M., "'The Sancity Of Womanhood': John Ruskin And The Medieval Madonna" (2015). Theses and Dissertations. 181. https://csuepress.columbusstate.edu/theses_dissertations/181 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Publications at CSU ePress. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of CSU ePress. COLUMBUS STATE UNIVERSITY 'THE SANCTITY OF WOMANHOOD': JOHN RUSKIN AND THE MEDIEVAL MADONNA A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF REQUIREMENTS OF THE CSU HONORS PROGRAM FOR HONORS IN THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF ARTS DEPARTMENT OF ART DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY BY KATHERINE M. HINZMAN COLUMBUS, GEORGIA 2015 nas Copyright © 2015 Katherine M. Hinzman All Rights Reserved. lumwuHWuimujuiiuimiuinnjiwuiuniiiiini Hanaro BBS 'The Sanctity of Womanhood': John Ruskin and the Medieval Madonna by {Catherine Margaret Hinzman A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of Requirements of the CSU Honors Program for Honors in the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Art History and History College of Arts College of Letters and Sciences Columbus State University Thesis Advisor: Date: Y/ao/fr>/J* Dr. ClaireMcCoy Xdt&gSL-/^ p&MyQJ^\ _ Date: y/~2~o/-g>( f Dr. Barlfefa Johnston Committee Member: r 1,-J/hs^ Date: ^ - Zo~( 5~~ Professor Michele McCrillis s Honors Committee Member Date 3-d&rij24>ir Dr.
    [Show full text]
  • Ruskin and Political Economy
    Donald Winch Ruskin and Political Economy Since I was educated originally as an economist, and have spent a number of years writing the history of what Ruskin came to regard as ‘the most cretinous, speechless, paralysing plague that has yet touched the brains of mankind’, you will sense my discomfort in speaking about his relationship with political economy on this celebratory occasion, surrounded by a distinguished gathering of Ruskinians.1 What I have to say, however, depends as much on my longer second occupation as a practitioner of intellectual history as it does on my fading knowledge of economists’ ways of thinking. Intellectual history requires a measure of generosity towards past thinkers, even an enjoyment of their quiddities. But approaching Ruskin’s views on political economy without prejudice requires an effort. For example, I cannot recognise the author of the Wealth of Nations, still less the author of the Theory of Moral Sentiments, in Ruskin’s description of Adam Smith as that ‘half-bred and half-witted Scotchman’ who had taught the ‘deliberate blasphemy’ that ‘thou shalt hate the Lord thy God, damn His laws, and covet thy neighbour’s goods’.2 Nor can I recognise John Stuart Mill in the hypercritical remarks that pepper Ruskin’s writings and correspondence. Supposing it to be true that Mill genuinely was ‘a poor cretinous wretch’ whose opinions on political economy were as false as Ruskin believed them to be, I still cannot believe that Mill was literally ‘the root of nearly all immediate evil among us in England’? 3 No doubt some of these pronouncements can be excused as rhetoric – in a post-modern world most things can.
    [Show full text]
  • Carlyle, Ruskin, and Morris: Work Across the ‘River of Fire’
    Carlyle, Ruskin, and Morris: Work Across the ‘River of Fire’ Rob Knowles* for between us and that which is to be, if art is not to perish utterly, there is something alive and devouring; something as it were a river of fire that will put all that tries to swim across to a hard proof indeed... (cited in Thompson 1977, 244). This imagery is from William Morris (1834-1896) writer, poet, artist, artisan, and socialist calling for courage in confronting the daunting work of transforming industrial capitalist society to a better socialist future; a transformation from ‘old art’ to ‘new art’. The reference to ‘art’ here is a reflection of Morris’s developed view of art as a holistic manifestation of the condition of human society and of its deep connection with ‘work’ or labour (Morris [1884] 1969, 94-5). The intransigent and deeply embedded barrier which Morris saw before him in his mission to contribute to transforming society was the Political Economy of his time.1 It was a similarly daunting ‘river of fire’ which had earlier confronted the prophetic ‘man of letters’, historian and social critic Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) and the equally prophetic and incisive social critic and art critic John Ruskin (1819-1900). Although the view of a politics of transformation or reform and the politics of a future society was distinctly different between these men, it was not nearly as different as many superficial readings of their work has suggested (Williams [1958] 1983, 146-9; Rosenberg 1974, chapter IX). And while their comparative politics is a subject which begs for a new history, it cannot be explored here.
    [Show full text]
  • Hobson on Democracy and the Humanized Economy." Democratic Moments: Reading Democratic Texts
    Tyler, Colin. "Hobson on Democracy and the Humanized Economy." Democratic Moments: Reading Democratic Texts. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. 169–176. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 23 Sep. 2021. <http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781350006195.ch-022>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 23 September 2021, 12:00 UTC. Copyright © Xavier Márquez and Contributors 2018. You may share this work for non- commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Hobson on Democracy and the Humanized Economy Colin Tyler Pacific internationalism, not merely in the sense of disarmament and political co-operation, but expressed in a growing solidarity of economic institutions, is not merely in the long run but even in the short run essential to the survival and revival of democracy within each State. This judgment does not, however, signify that we must wait for an international solidarity, which now seems remoter than in 1918, before attempting seriously such national planning as is needed to replace the fumbling wastes and failures of a capitalism which can no longer be operated so as to secure its prime object, profit. A revival of democracy upon a reformed basis will need a simultaneous activity upon the national and international fronts. The planning of economic life must be taken out of the hands of dictators and placed in the hands of the freely elected representatives of the people. This conscious struggle for economic democracy, with its equality of opportunity and standard of living, must be fought out within each nation.
    [Show full text]
  • John Ruskin and the Daguerreotype Photographic Process
    University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Theses (Historic Preservation) Graduate Program in Historic Preservation 2010 Certainty in the Uncertainty of Venice: John Ruskin and the Daguerreotype Photographic Process Crystal Leah Medler University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/hp_theses Part of the Historic Preservation and Conservation Commons Medler, Crystal Leah, "Certainty in the Uncertainty of Venice: John Ruskin and the Daguerreotype Photographic Process" (2010). Theses (Historic Preservation). 147. https://repository.upenn.edu/hp_theses/147 Suggested Citation: Medler, Crystal Leah. (2010). "Certainty in the Uncertainty of Venice: John Ruskin and the Daguerreotype Photographic Process." (Masters Thesis). University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA. This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/hp_theses/147 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Certainty in the Uncertainty of Venice: John Ruskin and the Daguerreotype Photographic Process Abstract John Ruskin was among the first to embrace photography as a tool for preservation of historic architecture. His use of the newly invented daguerreotype photographic process in Venice, beginning in 1845, altered the way he documented architecture and aided in his mission to spread awareness of what he believed to be destructive restoration that was conducted throughout Venice in the mid-nineteenth century. Ruskin used the daguerreotype photographic process to produce a record of architecture in Venice which was his implicit form of preservation – an alternative to the destructive restorations he encountered. Ruskin's interaction with the daguerreotype changed his way of thinking about architecture and the way in which he felt that it should be documented.
    [Show full text]