Editing John Ruskin (section)

===Art and design criticism===
Ruskin's early work defended the reputation of [[J. M. W. Turner]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20190207-was-ruskin-the-most-important-man-of-the-last-200-years |title=Was Ruskin the most important man of the last 200 years? |access-date=24 February 2019 |archive-date=26 February 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190226141108/http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20190207-was-ruskin-the-most-important-man-of-the-last-200-years |url-status=live }}</ref> He believed that all great art should communicate an understanding and appreciation of nature. Accordingly, inherited artistic conventions should be rejected. Only by means of direct observation can an artist, through form and colour, represent nature in art. He advised artists in ''[[Modern Painters]]'' I to: "go to Nature in all singleness of heart… rejecting nothing, selecting nothing and scorning nothing."{{sfn|Cook and Wedderburn|loc=3.624}} By the 1850s. Ruskin was celebrating the Pre-Raphaelites, whose members, he said, had formed "a new and noble school" of art that would provide a basis for a thoroughgoing reform of the art world.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.tate.org.uk/about/press-office/press-releases/ruskin-turner-and-pre-raphaelites |title=Ruskin, Turner and The Pre-Raphaelites |website=Tate.org.uk |date=7 January 2000 |access-date=18 July 2017 |archive-date=5 April 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170405225922/http://www.tate.org.uk/about/press-office/press-releases/ruskin-turner-and-pre-raphaelites |url-status=live }}</ref> For Ruskin, art should communicate truth above all things. However, this could not be revealed by mere display of skill, and must be an expression of the artist's whole moral outlook. Ruskin rejected the work of [[James McNeill Whistler|Whistler]] because he considered it to epitomise a reductive mechanisation of art.{{citation needed|date=August 2012}}

Ruskin's strong rejection of [[Classicism|Classical tradition]] in ''[[The Stones of Venice (book)|The Stones of Venice]]'' typifies the inextricable mix of aesthetics and morality in his thought: "Pagan in its origin, proud and unholy in its revival, paralysed in its old age… an architecture invented, as it seems, to make plagiarists of its architects, slaves of its workmen, and sybarites of its inhabitants; an architecture in which intellect is idle, invention impossible, but in which all luxury is gratified and all insolence fortified."<ref>Ruskin, ''The Stones of Venice'', iii, ch. iv, §35; Cook and Wedderburn 11.227.</ref> Rejection of mechanisation and standardisation informed Ruskin's theories of architecture, and his emphasis on the importance of the Medieval Gothic style. He praised the Gothic for what he saw as its reverence for nature and natural forms; the free, unfettered expression of artisans constructing and decorating buildings; and for the organic relationship he perceived between worker and guild, worker and community, worker and natural environment, and between worker and God. Attempts in the 19th century to reproduce Gothic forms (such as pointed arches), attempts he had helped inspire, were not enough to make these buildings expressions of what Ruskin saw as true Gothic feeling, faith, and organicism.

For Ruskin, the Gothic style in architecture embodied the same moral truths he sought to promote in the visual arts. It expressed the 'meaning' of architecture—as a combination of the values of strength, solidity and aspiration—all written, as it were, in stone. For Ruskin, creating true Gothic architecture involved the whole community, and expressed the full range of human emotions, from the [[wikt:sublime|sublime]] effects of soaring spires to the comically ridiculous carved [[grotesque]]s and [[gargoyle]]s. Even its crude and "savage" aspects were proof of "the liberty of every workman who struck the stone; a freedom of thought, and rank in scale of being, such as no laws, no charters, no charities can secure."<ref>John Unrau, "Ruskin, the Workman and the Savageness of Gothic", in ''New Approaches to Ruskin'', ed [[Robert Hewison]], 1981, pp. 33–50</ref> [[Classical architecture]], in contrast, expressed a morally vacuous and repressive standardisation. Ruskin associated Classical values with modern developments, in particular with the demoralising consequences of the [[Industrial Revolution]], resulting in buildings such as [[The Crystal Palace]], which he criticised.<ref>Cook and Wedderburn 12.417–32. Cynthia J. Gamble, "John Ruskin: conflicting responses to Crystal Palace" in Françoise Dassy and Catherine Hajdenko-Marshall (eds.), ''Sociétés et conflit: enjeux et représentation'' (L'Harmattan et l'Université de Cergy-Pontoise, 2006), pp. 135–49.</ref> Although Ruskin wrote about architecture in many works over the course of his career, his much-anthologised essay "The Nature of Gothic" from the second volume of ''[[The Stones of Venice (book)|The Stones of Venice]]'' (1853) is widely considered to be one of his most important and evocative discussions of his central argument.

Ruskin's theories indirectly encouraged a revival of Gothic styles, but Ruskin himself was often dissatisfied with the results. He objected that forms of mass-produced ''faux'' Gothic did not exemplify his principles, but showed disregard for the true meaning of the style. Even the [[Oxford University Museum of Natural History]], a building designed with Ruskin's collaboration, met with his disapproval. The [[O'Shea and Whelan|O'Shea brothers]], freehand stone carvers chosen to revive the creative "freedom of thought" of Gothic craftsmen, disappointed him by their lack of reverence for the task.

Ruskin's distaste for oppressive standardisation led to later works in which he attacked ''[[laissez-faire]]'' capitalism, which he thought was at its root. His ideas provided inspiration for the [[Arts and Crafts Movement]], the founders of the [[National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty|National Trust]], the [[National Art Collections Fund]], and the [[Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings]].
[[File:Study of Gneiss Rock.jpg|thumb|John Ruskin's ''Study of Gneiss Rock, Glenfinlas'', 1853. Pen and ink and wash with Chinese ink on paper, [[Ashmolean Museum]], [[Oxford]], England.]]
Ruskin's views on art, wrote [[Kenneth Clark]], "cannot be made to form a [[logical system]], and perhaps owe to this fact a part of their value." Ruskin's accounts of art are descriptions of a superior type that conjure images vividly in the mind's eye.<ref>{{cite book
| first=Alastair
| last=Fowler
| year=1989
| title= The History of English Literature
| publisher=Harvard University Press
| location=Cambridge, MA
| page= 245
| isbn=  0-674-39664-2 }}</ref>
Clark neatly summarises the key features of Ruskin's writing on art and architecture:
<blockquote>
# Art is not a matter of taste, but involves the whole man. Whether in making or perceiving a work of art, we bring to bear on it feeling, intellect, morals, knowledge, memory, and every other human capacity, all focused in a flash on a single point. Aesthetic man is a concept as false and dehumanising as economic man.
# Even the most superior mind and the most powerful imagination must found itself on facts, which must be recognised for what they are. The imagination will often reshape them in a way which the prosaic mind cannot understand; but this recreation will be based on facts, not on formulas or illusions.
# These facts must be perceived by the senses, or felt; not learnt.
# The greatest artists and schools of art have believed it their duty to impart vital truths, not only about the facts of vision, but about religion and the conduct of life.
# Beauty of form is revealed in organisms which have developed perfectly according to their laws of growth, and so give, in his own words, 'the appearance of felicitous fulfilment of function.'
# This fulfilment of function depends on all parts of an organism cohering and co-operating. This was what he called the 'Law of Help,' one of Ruskin's fundamental beliefs, extending from nature and art to society.
# Good art is done with enjoyment. The artist must feel that, within certain reasonable limits, he is free, that he is wanted by society, and that the ideas he is asked to express are true and important.
# Great art is the expression of epochs where people are united by a common faith and a common purpose, accept their laws, believe in their leaders, and take a serious view of human destiny.<ref>Kenneth Clark, "A Note on Ruskin's Writings on Art and Architecture", in idem, ''Ruskin Today'' (John Murray, 1964) (reissued as ''Selected Writings'', Penguin, 1991), pp. 133–34.</ref>
</blockquote>