The Art of Ruskin and the Spirit of Place by John Dixon Hunt (review)

IF 0.2 3区 社会学 0 HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Art of Ruskin and the Spirit of Place by John Dixon Hunt Christiana Payne (bio) The Art of Ruskin and the Spirit of Place, by John Dixon Hunt; pp. 286. London: Reaktion Books, 2020, $50.00, $50.00 paper, $50.00 ebook. John Ruskin drew constantly and compulsively throughout his life, only ceasing to do so after his final mental collapse in 1889. Several thousand of his drawings survive, covering the vast range of his interests. The Art of Ruskin and the Spirit of Place sets out to consider him as a topographer, responding to the spirit of a place—its genius loci. Familiar from the history of landscape gardening, this term can be appropriately applied to Ruskin's drawings, both because he was very much aware of the way geology, climate, and historical events shaped places, but also because the places he drew aroused his own deep emotions. Some of his favorite locations, such as Chamonix, were associated with happy travels in his youth with his parents; others, such as Abbeville and Venice, mingled pain and pleasure. They gave him pleasure in the achievements of the Gothic and early Renaissance builders and craftsmen, pain in the knowledge of the decay wrought by neglect and ill-judged renovation. Other landscapes, such as mountain peaks and passes, induced a melancholy born of the knowledge of the human tragedies they so often witnessed. John Dixon Hunt, Emeritus Professor of the History and Theory of Landscape at the University of Pennsylvania, is well placed to write on this topic. He has had a long and distinguished career as an authority on English literature and garden design. His biography of Ruskin, The Wider Sea: A Life of John Ruskin, was published in 1982 (the dust jacket erroneously dates it to 1992), and in 1985 he founded the academic journal Word & Image (1985–present), which focuses on the relationship between the visual and the verbal. In this book he sets out to show that Ruskin's drawings should be considered not merely illustrative of what he wrote, but as the evidence of practices that shaped his way of thinking and writing. They represent "one means of access to his astonishing imagination" (11). The chapters cover the relationship between drawing and writing in Ruskin's work, his idea of the picturesque, his education as a draughtsman, and his own teaching of drawing. There are separate chapters on Venice and on two of Ruskin's major concerns in landscape: geology and water, the latter including clouds and climate change. Hunt [End Page 331] emphasizes the importance of Ruskin's early experiences. On travels with his parents, he was encouraged to record his impressions both verbally and visually, leading to a constant interplay in his work between writing and drawing. In 1829, when he was ten, his father gave him a set of fifty minerals of the Lake District, beginning his lifelong interest in geology. For his thirteenth birthday, his father's business partner gave him Samuel Rogers's Italy, a Poem (1822), with its images and words side by side, the images being vignettes by J. M. W. Turner, another source of a lifelong passion. Hunt draws on Samuel Taylor Coleridge's idea of the primary and secondary imaginations to explain Ruskin's way of seeing the world. The primary imagination "consists in an ability to look well and carefully at things," which allowed Ruskin to "draw or explain straightforwardly what he observed" (26). The secondary imagination recreates something new. As Hunt observes, "it was qualities of mystery, effect and beauty that Ruskin sought in places" (63). Many of his best landscape drawings achieve this. Their fragmentary nature—seen as a disadvantage on the rare occasions when he exhibited his work—adds to their evocative power. There was a tension in Ruskin's work between science and emotion, and between his adulation of Turner and his self-appointed role as prophet of Pre-Raphaelitism. The example of John Brett's Val d'Aosta (1858) shows that Ruskin might fail to recognize how other artists had grasped the genius loci of a place, even when their works depicted the qualities he had picked out in...
《罗斯金的艺术与地方精神》约翰·迪克森·亨特著(书评)
书评:《罗斯金的艺术与地方精神》作者:约翰·迪克森·亨特;286页。伦敦:Reaktion Books, 2020, 50美元,纸质书50美元,电子书50美元。约翰·拉斯金一生都在不停地作画,直到1889年精神崩溃后才停止作画。他的几千幅画保存了下来,涵盖了他广泛的兴趣。《罗斯金的艺术与地域精神》一书将他视为一位地形学家,回应了一个地方的精神——它的天才地点。从景观园林的历史来看,这个术语很适合用在罗斯金的绘画上,因为他非常了解地质、气候和历史事件塑造地方的方式,也因为他画的地方唤起了他自己的深刻情感。他最喜欢的一些地方,比如夏蒙尼(Chamonix),与他年轻时与父母的快乐旅行有关;其他城市,如阿比维尔和威尼斯,则苦乐参半。哥特式建筑和早期文艺复兴时期的建筑工人和工匠所取得的成就使他感到高兴,但由于忽视和不明智的翻新而造成的衰败却使他感到痛苦。其他风景,如山峰和隘口,引起了一种忧郁,这源于他们经常目睹的人类悲剧的知识。宾夕法尼亚大学景观历史与理论荣誉教授约翰·迪克森·亨特(John Dixon Hunt)很适合写这个话题。作为英国文学和园林设计方面的权威,他有着长期而杰出的职业生涯。他为罗斯金写的传记《更广阔的海洋:约翰·罗斯金的一生》出版于1982年(封皮错误地将该书的出版日期定在了1992年)。1985年,他创办了学术期刊《文字与图像》(1985年至今),专注于视觉与语言之间的关系。在这本书中,他着手表明,罗斯金的绘画不应该仅仅被认为是对他所写内容的说明,而是作为塑造他思维和写作方式的实践的证据。它们代表了“通往他惊人想象力的一种途径”(11)。这些章节涵盖了罗斯金作品中绘画和写作之间的关系,他对风景如画的看法,他作为一名绘图员的教育,以及他自己的绘画教学。书中有单独的章节讲述威尼斯和罗斯金在景观方面的两个主要关注点:地质和水,后者包括云和气候变化。亨特强调了罗斯金早年经历的重要性。在与父母一起旅行时,他被鼓励用语言和视觉记录自己的印象,这使得他的作品在写作和绘画之间不断相互作用。1829年,当他10岁的时候,他的父亲给了他一套湖区的50种矿物,从此开始了他对地质学的毕生兴趣。在他13岁生日的时候,他父亲的生意伙伴送给了他塞缪尔·罗杰斯的《意大利,一首诗》(1822),画面和文字并列,这些图像是j·m·w·特纳的小插图,这是他一生的激情的另一个来源。亨特借鉴了塞缪尔·泰勒·柯勒律治关于初级和次级想象的观点来解释罗斯金看待世界的方式。初级想象力“包括仔细观察事物的能力”,这使得罗斯金能够“直接描绘或解释他所观察到的东西”(26)。二次想象创造出新的东西。正如亨特所观察到的,“罗斯金在地方寻找的是神秘、效果和美的品质”(63)。他的许多最好的风景画都做到了这一点。它们的碎片性——在他展出作品的罕见场合被视为一种劣势——增加了它们的唤起力。在罗斯金的作品中,科学与情感之间,以及他对特纳的奉承与他自封的拉斐尔前派先知之间,存在着一种紧张关系。约翰·布雷特(John Brett)的《奥斯塔谷》(Val d’aosta, 1858)的例子表明,拉斯金可能没有意识到其他艺术家是如何抓住一个地方的天才轨迹的,即使他们的作品描绘了他在……
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来源期刊
VICTORIAN STUDIES
VICTORIAN STUDIES HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY-
CiteScore
0.90
自引率
9.10%
发文量
0
期刊介绍: For more than 50 years, Victorian Studies has been devoted to the study of British culture of the Victorian age. It regularly includes interdisciplinary articles on comparative literature, social and political history, and the histories of education, philosophy, fine arts, economics, law and science, as well as review essays, and an extensive book review section. An annual cumulative and fully searchable bibliography of noteworthy publications that have a bearing on the Victorian period is available electronically and is included in the cost of a subscription. Victorian Studies Online Bibliography
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