BLACK ARTS, RUINED CATHEDRALS, AND THE GRAVE IN ENGRAVING: RUSKIN AND THE FATAL EXCESS OF ART

Abstract

TO SPEAK ABOUT JOHN RUSKIN’S anxious figures for engraved reproduction is to speak about his troubled relationship to a modernity in which excess and impermanence present complex and interrelated challenges. The ruined cathedral in my title occurs in lectures Ruskin delivered in 1857, and published the same year as The Political Economy of Art. Invited to speak at Manchester on the occasion of the Art-Treasures Exhibition, at the height of his fame as a critic, Ruskin responded to the moment with two lectures challenging much that the exhibition stood for. He offered the following apocalyptic description of the situation of art away from the self-congratulating festival. It is worth considering this passage — at once about art and about the responsibility for its blighting — in relation to the immense temporary structure built to house the Art-Treasures Exhibition (Figure 9):