Modern Painters [Abridged] [Hardcover]

John Ruskin (Author), David Barrie (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 12, 1988

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Ruskin, the Victorian-era British writer whose work had a profound influence on artists, art historians, and writers both during his life and after, wrote Modern Painters in five separate volumes published between 1843 and 1860. It is, among other things, an evaluation of individual painters, a religious statement, a discourse on nature, and a splendid example of Victorian prose style. The original text has been abridged into this one-volume edition, which preserves the essential points of Ruskin's argument and provides the modern reader with a satisfying sample of Ruskin's justly acclaimed prose. For general collections and research and academic collections in art, history, and literature. Kathryn W. Finkelstein, M.Ln., Cincinnati
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 656 pages
• Publisher: Knopf (May 12, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 039456846X
• ISBN-13: 978-0394568461
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 0.8 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,936,278 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing edition, July 13, 2009

By 

G. Perez-Barreiro - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Modern Painters (Paperback)

This is a classic text, but unfortunately this edition is a poorly-made facsimile of an unsourced original. The result is that the type is so small and badly printed that it is virtually illegible. It has none of the charm of a real facsimile, but seems more like a bad xerox copy.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Abridged Poorly Printed Yet Still Worthwhile, December 30, 2009

By 

Martin Asiner "Adjunct College Instructor" (Jersey City, NJ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

John Ruskin considers the relationship that art has with those who appreciate it. He mentions in the two previous volumes of Modern Painters that there were two sources of pleasure for art lovers. The first source lay in the observer's enjoyment in viewing the simple resemblance of the art object to its original model in nature. The second source was the actual pleasure taken in the contemplation of the painted object. There was a third source which functioned as a link between the first two--the relation of the meaning of the painted object to the object itself. Ruskin wishes to use these various sources of pleasure to isolate those traits that mark some artists as great and others as mediocre.

Ruskin admits that there are various unavoidable difficulties in setting up a systematic approach whose purpose it would be to accomplish his goal; instead, he suggests that his careful arrangement of chapters in Modern Painters will make the answer readily apparent.

He is quick to point out that the greatest art includes the greatest ideas, but he is still left with the central question of some basic definitions: "What is it that makes one truth greater than another, one thought greater than another?" The answer, he states, may rest in the historical division between the Great Art School of Theory and the Low Art School of Theory. The former connotes "a certain noble manner of painting, which it was desirable that all students of Art should be early led to reverence and adopt." By contrast, the latter is synonymous with "vulgar, low, or realist," which in terms of painting and conceiving "was equally necessary that all students should be taught to avoid." One obvious flaw to Ruskin was the inherent limits of such a twin level categorization. Those who call themselves "high" are often ridiculed for their pretentiousness. Then there are artists who claim not to be in either camp as their stated goals relate to entirely unrelated affairs like strength, health, and humbleness.

Before Ruskin can even begin to list the qualities that one may deem requisite for inclusion as High Art, he first asks whether it truly exists at all or is no more than an agreed on fiction that makes its practitioners feel high and mighty about themselves. Rather than devising his own rationale for the existence of the term, he turns to the noted writer/critic of the Augustan Age, Sir Joshua Reynolds for help. Reynolds had written various essays for Johnson's The Idler which dealt with this very topic. In The Idler # 79, Reynolds compares the Dutch with the Italian painters. The former he classifies as the "low" while the latter as the "high." The Dutch are low due to their excelling as mechanical imitators "in which the slowest intellect is sure to succeed best." The Italians are high because their art is a visual representation of their imaginative poetry and it is this which gives them the claim to superiority.

Though Ruskin accepts Reynolds' claim about the Italians, he nevertheless feels constrained to point out what he sees as flaws in his methodology. Reynolds interprets a "slow" intellect as a pejorative; Ruskin grants that "slow" might just as easily and laudably be seen as worthwhile restraint. Further, Reynolds notes with obvious approval how exactly the Dutch copy an object from nature onto a canvas. This method of faithfully rendering such an object is termed typical of the "historical" school of art. The Italians, with their poetic renderings, are linked with the "poetical" school." Paradoxically, the artists of the poetical school use accurate reproduction of object from nature to canvas at least as often as do those of the historical school. Thus, Reynolds' conclusion falls flat, leaving Ruskin back to square one.

Ruskin tries a different tack to clarify the relation that art has to the observer of that art. He now asks rhetorically: "What is poetry?" His conclusion is that poetry is "the suggestion, by the imagination, of noble grounds for the noble emotions." He adds that these emotions are the "four principal sacred passions: Love, Veneration, Admiration, and Joy." These sacred passions have their contraries: "Hatred, Scorn, Horror, and Grief." Poetry, then, is the mixing of these into their various combinations, which emerge as "poetical feeling." Yet, these feelings by themselves do not constitute poetry. What is needed to complete the equation is that they must be felt on noble grounds, which he helpfully adds as being "true" or "great." The firing of gunpowder, for example, would not be "great" but the budding of a flower would be so. Once the reader reads a poem that has the needed emotions, has a true ground, then that reader needs to interact with that poem via the active use of his imagination to transform the verbal prompts on the page into indelible images in his head. When that reader notes the accumulation of delicate details, then he will perceive an affecting result, which most critics call the "power" of poetry to move men.

Despite Ruskin's lengthy digression on poetry, he adds that "Painting is properly to be opposed to speaking or writing but not to poetry. Both painting and speaking are methods of expression. Poetry is the employment of either for the noblest purposes." This frank admission does not necessarily return Ruskin to square one. He does see a link between the sister arts: "We gather three important indications of the supposed nature of the Great Style. That it is the work of men in a state of enthusiasm. That it is like the writing of Homer; and that it has as little as possible of `common nature' in it."

The first requirement is fairly obvious. Ruskin requires that the artist "feel strongly and nobly." The concept of "nobly" disqualifies such base passions as envy, jealousy, or rank ambition. The second is less obvious due to the vagueness of "common nature." Though Homer often writes of "common" things in the Iliad and the Odyssey--shields, cups, sandals and the like--there is little that is common in the passions of the verse. So as Homer used the common and small minutia of a warrior's daily routine to point that warrior toward greater things, so must the painter with his visually reproduced common and small items.

In Modern Painters, Ruskin also considers the role that the mind plays regarding the relation between the mind viewing external reality as either subjective or objective.

John Ruskin begins by distinguishing between "objective" and "subjective." The former he defines as the "qualities of things which they always have, irrespective of any other nature, as roundness or squareness." The latter refers to "the qualities of things which thus depend upon our perception of them, and upon our human nature as affected by them." From this he considers which of the two terms has the greater impact on our lives. He facetiously mentions philosophers who may deny the latent power to destroy that inheres within gunpowder even as that gunpowder proves otherwise. Ruskin does not like either term since both have meanings which vary from person to person and context to context. For "subjective," one might easily use "It seems to me." And for objective, one can say "It is so."

From what seems so to what is so, Ruskin suggests that one's state of mind may account for the perception of either. Those who are under the stress of exaggerated emotion may easily confuse the two. Such emotion need not be limited to the type involved in life-threatening situations. The simple act of reading a poem may induce the reader to read those lines in a deliberately and artfully heightened emotion. The reader knows that the lines are literally untrue but cares not due to the pleasure they bring. The "fallacy" lies in one's knowing the poem's unreal base but wishes to continue reading of his own accord even though that accord is not totally his own. Ruskin quotes two lines from the poet Kingsley:
"They rowed her across the rolling foam
The cruel, crawling foam."
Ruskin writes that "The foam is not cruel, neither does it crawl." The poetic power of these lines lie in their ability to inject sufficient grief in the mind of the reader to suspend, however temporarily, that reader's ability to recognize the impossibility involved. Ruskin terms this ability to produce a heightened and false awareness as the pathetic fallacy.

Ruskin admits that all poets use this fallacy to varying extents, though only those of the first rank can make the resultant passion flow naturally and smoothly from a subjective reading to an objective acceptance. He provides an example of the improper use of the pathetic fallacy from Coleridge:
"The one red leaf, the last of its clan,
That dances as often as dance it can."
Ruskin accuses Coleridge of fancying that the poem has "a life to it, and will, which there are not; confuses its powerlessness with choice, its fading death with merriment, and the wind that shakes it with music."

For execrable lines like these, the problem is that the fallacy is not pathetic at all. The poet has unwisely chosen to mix mutually exclusive emotions that jar the reader with their widely varying polarities rather than seduce the reader with their evolving harmonies. If the erring poet writes plodding lines like this, then if the reader accepts their plodding as a smooth segue from objectivity to subjectivity, then this reader is far more at fault than the poet. Ruskin portrays such readers as having "a mind and body in some sort too weak to deal fully with what is before them or upon them." Contrariwise, for those readers who recognize the clangor of clashing emotions when they see them, Ruskin has only the highest praise. Based on those who accept or reject the wrongful... Read more ›