2. JOHN RUSKIN TIMELINE
1819: John Ruskin was born in London on
8 February 1819.
1836: John first wrote for an Architecture
Magazine in 1836-7.
1839: The Transactions of the
Meteorological Society was published.
1843: His first major writing Modern
Painters came in 1843.
1848: John Ruskin married Effie Gray.
1854: The marriage broke up in 1854.
3. 1858: He met Rose La Touché in 1858.
1869: He became the first Slade
Professor of Fine Arts in 1869.
1870: He established a charity Guild of
St George.
1878: He was sued by James McNeill
Whistler in 1878.
1885: John Ruskin established the
School of Art in Sidney.
1900: He died on 20 January 1900.
1901: Ruskin Museum was established.
4. • The English critic and social theorist John
Ruskin (1819-1900) more than any other man
shaped the esthetic values and tastes of
Victorian England.
• His writings combine enormous sensitivity and
human compassion with a burning zeal for
moral value
• John Ruskin's principal insight was that art is
an expression of the values of a society
• He's been called a "weirdo" and "manic
depressive“
• "strange and unbalanced genius“
5. • “The Seven Lamps of Architecture, Ruskin
awakened interest in medieval Gothic
architecture.
• “The Stones of venice”
• The 19th century Gothic Revival period of
architectural design in England, better
known as Victorian Gothic, was in large part
due to the writings of John Ruskin.
Important writings
7. • John Ruskin rebelled against formal, classical
art and architecture.
• Ruskin championed the asymmetrical, rough
architecture of medieval Europe.
• His passionate writings heralded the Gothic
Revival movement in Britain and paved the way
for the Arts & Crafts movement in Britain and
the United States.
• Like William Morris and other Arts & Crafts
philosophers, John Ruskin opposed
industrialization and rejected the use of
machine-made materials.
9. Gothic revival architecture:- features
• Pointed windows with decorative
tracery
• Grouped chimneys
• Pinnacles Battlements and shaped
parapets
• Leaded glass
• Quatrefoil and clover-shaped windows
• Asymmetrical floor plan
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17. Arts and crafts movement :- features
• Wood, stone, or stucco siding
• Low-pitched roof
• Exposed roof rafters
• Porch with thick square or round columns
• Exterior chimney made with stone
• Open floor plans; few hallways
• Numerous windows
• Some windows with stained or leaded glass
• Beamed ceilings
• Built-in cabinets, shelves, and seating
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23. 1. Beauty and Art are closely connected.
2. Beauty has a moral function: it helps us develop
a high moral sense;
3. Art contributes to the spiritual health of man.
4. All great art derives from deep morality.
5. Industrial society, lacks spiritual values, so
cannot produce great art;
6. the Middle Ages society is characterized by deep
morality.
Ruskin’s Ideology
24. 1) MODERN PAINTERS 1 – (1843)
2) 1845 TOUR AND MODERN PAINTERS –(1846)
3) THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE
4) THE STONES OF VENICE –(1849)
Ruskin, here in his
sixteenth year, deep in
his Prout phase,
emulating his
teacher who created
the urban picturesque.
Ancient Maison,
Lucerne, Ulm
John Ruskin 1835
Houses and
Catheadral
Spire, Ulm
John Ruskin
25.
26. The lamp of memory –
the seven lamps of
architecture
27. In 1849 John Ruskin published an article called
The Seven Lamps of Architecture. In this he
distills the essence of the
Gothic Revival down to seven “lamps”. They are as
follows:
• Sacrifice
• Truth
• Power
• Beauty
• Life
• Memory
• Obedience
28. • These aren’t guides for how to create a building. These are
the foundations for building with integrity, at least to the mind
of John Ruskin
• The lamp of Life is all but forgotten. John Ruskin valued the
contribution of the individual artist and craftsmen. There is
little in the way of current building activity, whether modern or
traditional, that can be said to draw value from the
contribution of its craftsmen. Mass production has won the
day.
• The architectural concepts presented here are like that. They
are paradigms not laws. They provide viewpoints, but in the
end most people will not understand the concepts. They will
simply look at a building and think “I like that” or “What were
they thinking?” They are not an unworthy audience for not
understanding the concept. The concept was deficient or it was
applied incorrectly, or perhaps there are some things that will
always simply be a matter of taste.
29. Sacrifice –Let me borrow from the Bible to
explain this. “Do everything as unto the Lord”. Do
it well as if you were trying to please God with
your design and craft.
Obedience - “The architecture of a nation is
great only when it is as universal and as
established as it language”. John Ruskin
asserted that England should have one school of
architecture, a type of Gothic that was peculiarly
English.
30. Power – A building is a shape, a mass. Its immensity in
comparison to
man has its own effect apart from its ornamentation.
The architect’s job is to display this shape to its best
effect.
Life – This has less to do with the building as it is, but
rather the
building as it was formed. Building should be made with
human hands,and by this he means skilled human
hands, masons and carvers and carpenters. The life of
the builder must be in the building. Those who build
their own houses can relate to this. Ruskin was against
the mass production of buildings and any innovation
that decreased the skill content of the buildings.
31. Truth – Your buildings should be honest in how
they present
themselves. No fancy facades hiding poor
construction. No wood pretending to be stone.
Memory – Buildings (and houses) should reflect
the culture and
what went on before. They in turn will inform the
culture that follows. John Ruskin was not a big
fan of innovative disruption.Even gradual change
is something to be distrusted. In some ways
he was the ultimate cultural conservative.
32. Beauty – Here John Ruskin refers to skin and
ornamentation. He
draws heavily on nature, because nature is our
school master for beauty. Therefore art in our
buildings should be imitative of the forms and
lines and shapes we see in nature.If a column
seems beautiful it is because we see them all
around us in the stems of plants.If a pointed arch
is pleasing to the eye it is because that shape
was first pleasing as the shape of a leaf.He also
castigates some ornamentation that is not
imitative of nature, such as the Greek Key, a
running spiral design common in some Greek
architecture.
