magiadoreal

Age: 80 when he died. Appearance: Flaccid. Possibly. Allegedly. Oh, I know this guy! He's the one who didn't know women had pubic hair! What? That is literally all I know. It's all anyone knows. He was an amazing man. An art critic, patron of many members of the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, social philosopher, prescient proselytiser for environmental concerns, writer, philanthropist ... Wow! All that and he still didn't know anything about lady gardens. I can see we are going to have to deal with this issue. After all, the forthcoming film of his life, written by and starring Emma Thompson, seems to be placing it front and centre. An unfortunate phrase, but continue. Art historians who have seen previews of the film, Effie Gray – Is that the woman whose hoo-ha caused all the hoo-ha? She was his wife for five unconsummated years, yes, before leaving him for his protege John Millais. Woah! Five years? Because she had pubic hair? Will you just listen? Art histori...

  The whole sky is one ocean of alternate waves of cloud and light, so blended together that the eye cannot rest on any  one without being guided to the next, and so to a hundred more, till it is lost over again in every wreath - that if it divides the sky into quarters of inches and tries to count and comprehend the component parts of any single one of those divisions, it is still as utterly defied and defeated by the parts as by the whole - that there is not one line out of the millions there which repeats another, not one which is unconnected with the another, not one which does not in itself convey histories of distance and space, and suggest new and changeful form. John Ruskin

Why then, asks Ruskin, is the nineteenth century an age in which painting seems to have less and less interest and more and more concentration on what in previous times had been merely the natural background? A medieval knight or monk looking at modern painting would ask: why do those people now spend the whole their lives making pictures of trees and clouds and bits of stones and runlets of waters, instead of gods and saints and heroes? In the struggle to get into right relation with the universe, there are for Ruskin two opposite and yet related errors: the first "that of caring for man only; and for the rest of universe, little or not at all"; the other, "that of caring for the universe only; - for man, not at all."  It is the second, he says, which "in a measure, is the error of modern science." It is the error of modern art too, if we lose trust in ourselves and our place in the universe. Philip Davis, The Victorians , p. 81

Deve-se fazer história com a arquitetura de uma época e depois conservá-la. As construções civis e domésticas são as mais importantes no significado histórico. A casa do homem do povo deve ser preservada pois relata a evolução nacional, devendo ter o mesmo respeito que o das grandes construções consideradas por muitos importantes. Mais vale um material grosseiro, mas que narre uma história, do que uma obra rica e sem significado. A maior glória de um edifício não depende da sua pedra ou de seu ouro, mas sim, do fato de estar relacionada com a sensação profunda de expressão. Uma expressão não se reproduz, pois as idéias são inúmeras e diferentes os homens; segundo os objetos de diferentes estudos, chegar-se-ia a inúmeras conclusões. A restauração é a destruição do edifício, é como tentar ressuscitar os mortos. É melhor manter uma ruína do que restaurá-la. John Ruskin

John Ruskin had long predicted that the loss of human imaginative power was the inevitable consequence of a new professionalism that left man and the world only half of what they were. Philip Davis, The Victorians , p. 78.