Art and society
Art and society
There was no cataclysmic watershed in Ruskin’s transition from art to social critic; it was
a continuous thematic development where the moral centrality evident in his early works of art criticism began to take on a more immediate social significance. In his writings and lectures in the 1850s Ruskin continued to function in his primary role as an art critic, but as his intolerance of economic inequality and exploitation increased, he became a deliberate and conscious social moralist. His critique of the nineteenth-century POLITICAL ECONOMY remained inextricably inter-related with his role as an aesthete (see AESTHETICS, PAINTING AND ARCHITECTURE) and his conviction that the inherent moral dimension of art and architecture was a reflection of the nation’s values. Following the example of CARLYLE, he did not locate social ills in class inequality, but in the kind of work men were forced to do and in the conditions under which they laboured. In vol. two of The Stones of Venice (1853), he used a romantic (see ROMANTICISM, INDIVIDUALISM AND IDEAS OF THE SELF)/organicist metaphor for his critique of contemporary production methods, translating his admiration for the natural forms of Gothic architecture into a social principle that opposed competition and alienation with co-operation and unity. He criticized the crude nineteenth-century interpretation of Adam Smith’s division of labour, which he claimed was destroying creative freedom, and placed his emphasis on the method of production, the intrinsic value of the end product and its effects on the quality of life. He thought that only by
Encyclopedia of nineteenth-century thought 566
moving these ethical considerations from the periphery to the centre of production would
a proper sense of values be restored.
In pursuit of this aspiration Ruskin taught drawing for a time at the Working Men’s College, established in London in 1854, by a group of Christian Socialists under the leadership of F.D.MAURICE. They were not socialists in the later political interpretation of the movement, and proved too moderate to satisfy Ruskin, who was well aware of the growing unrest of the workforce. They did, however, in their emphasis on co-operation, provide a radical alternative to the prevalent orthodox Christian acceptance of social and economic injustice. Even after Ruskin’s evangelical ‘unconversion’ in the late 1850s, he continued to adhere to the fundamental Christian ethics that underpinned his constant push for moral regeneration. Up to 1859 he continued to hope that this regeneration could
be achieved through art, and his conscious moralizing was still contained within the esoteric but recognizable framework of art and architecture.
By 1860, at the age of 41, Ruskin had accepted that society was not going to be saved by art, and that he needed to direct his all-pervading sense of justice at the political economy and a system of values that, he considered, were little more than respect for convention. What he proposed was an alternative set of values, derived from Christian principles, but devoid of evangelical hypocrisy, which were to be the salvation of a sick capitalist society. The lectures he gave in the industrial Mid-lands in the late 1850s—The Political Economy of Art (1857) and The Two Paths (1859)—were a positive statement of Ruskin’s continuity of purpose and conviction. The ethic these lectures located had developed out of the aesthetic realism of The Stones of Venice, and anticipated the more overt critique of classical economics in Unto this Last (1862).
Parts
» Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Thought
» ANTI-COLONIAL MOVEMENTS AND IDEAS
» SIMON J.POTTER ARNOLD, MATTHEW (1822–87)
» S.JONES BERNSTEIN, EDUARD (1850–1932)
» THE BODY, MEDICINE, HEALTH AND DISEASE
» BONALD, LOUIS DE (1754–1840)
» PAMELA PILBEAM CARLYLE, THOMAS (1795–1881)
» CHATEAUBRIAND, FRANÇOIS RENÉ AUGUSTE (1768–1848)
» CHINESE THOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
» CIESZKOWSKI, AUGUST (1814–94)
» JOHN MORROW COMBE, GEORGE (1788–1858)
» ALAN R.KING COMTE, AUGUSTE (1798–1857)
» The conservative reaction to radical natural-rights theory
» French conservatives and the challenge of the revolutionary past
» Institutional continuity and intellectual and moral discontinuity in British conservatism
» JOHN MORROW CONSIDÉRANT, VICTOR (1808–93)
» CONSTANT, BENJAMIN (1767–1830)
» CLIVE E.HILL DEMOCRACY, POPULISM AND RIGHTS
» PAMELA PILBEAM DEWEY, JOHN (1859–1952)
» DILTHEY, WILHELM (1833–1911)
» DOSTOEVSKY, FEODOR (1821–81)
» CHERKASOVA DU BOIS, W.E.B. (1868–1963)
» Saint-Simon and Saint-Simonism
» Other forms of non-Marxian socialism
» GREGORY CLAEYS EMERSON, RALPH WALDO (1803–82)
» ENFANTIN, BARTHÉLEMY-PROSPER (1796–1864)
» Revolutions, citizenship and sexual difference
» Socialism, labour, evangelical reform and public speaking
» Women’s rights at mid-century: an international movements
» KATHRYN M.TOMASEK FEUERBACH, LUDWIG (1804–72)
» FOURIER, CHARLES (1772–1837)
» KARINE VARLEY FREUD, SIGMUND (1856–1939)
» GREGORY CLAEYS GANDHI, MOHANDAS K. (1869–1948)
» GARIBALDI, GIUSEPPE (1807–82)
» CHRISTOPHER DUGGAN GEORGE, HENRY (1839–97)
» GOBINEAU, JOSEPH COMTE DE (1816– 82)
» LYMAN TOWER SARGENT GREEN, T.H. (1836–82)
» EVELINA BARBASHINA HISTORIOGRAPHY AND THE IDEA OF PROGRESS
» From conjectural history to the Whig interpretation of history
» The critique of the idea of progress
» HUMBOLDT, WILHELM, FREIHERR VON (1767–1835)
» TIM KIRK HUXLEY, T.H. (1825–95)
» CHRISTOPHER DUGGAN IMPERIALISM AND EMPIRE
» SIMON J.POTTER INDIAN THOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
» INDUSTRIALISM, POVERTY AND THE WORKING CLASSES
» INTELLECTUALS, ELITES AND MERITOCRACY
» Tanzimat and the Ottoman Empire
» Other responses to colonialism and modernity
» Opening of the country and the Meiji Restoration
» CHUSHICHI TSUZUKI JEFFERSON, THOMAS (1743–1826)
» JEVONS, WILLIAM STANLEY (1835–82)
» One person, many faces: an introduction to a resonant life
» Stages on Life’s Way: from aesthetic, via ethical, to religious
» Intermission: the Corsair affair
» KROPOTKIN, PIETR (1842–1921)
» LABRIOLA, ANTONIO (1843–1904)
» LAMARTINE, ALPHONSE DE (1790– 1869)
» Continental liberalism FRANCE
» GREGORY CLAEYS LIEBKNECHT, WILHELM (1826–1900)
» LOMBROSO, CESARE (1835–1909)
» MACAULAY, THOMAS BABINGTON (1800–59)
» Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
» Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche
» GREGORY CLAEYS MAISTRE, JOSEPH DE (1753–1821)
» MALTHUS, THOMAS ROBERT (1766– 1834)
» MARSHALL, ALFRED (1842–1924)
» GREGORY CLAEYS MARX AND MARXISM
» The development of Marxism to 1914
» GREGORY CLAEYS MAURRAS, CHARLES (1868–1952)
» MEINECKE, FRIEDRICH (1862–1954)
» MICHAEL LEVIN MILL, JOHN STUART (1806–73)
» THE NATION, NATIONALISM AND THE NATIONAL PRINCIPLE
» CHRISTOPHER DUGGAN NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH (1844–1900)
» DAN STONE NOVELS, POETRY AND DRAMA
» The development of Owen’s thought after 1820
» The development of Paine’s thought
» DAVID GLADSTONE PARETO, WILFREDO (1848–1923)
» Alternatives to classical economics
» Utilitarianism and the marginal revolution
» ANTHONY BREWER PROUDHON, PIERRE-JOSEPH (1809– 65)
» ‘Psychology has a long past but a short history’
» ‘Time present and time past’: James’s Principles
» RANKE, LEOPOLD VON (1795–1886)
» Biblical criticism and moral critiques
» TIMOTHY LARSEN RENAN, JOSEPH-ERNEST (1823–1892)
» GEORGIOS VAROUXAKIS RICARDO, DAVID (1772–1823)
» ROMANTICISM, INDIVIDUALISM AND IDEAS OF THE SELF
» Individualism, individuality, the self and psyche
» From alienation to Romantic love
» Critique of Political Economy
» Nihilism, populism, anarchism and early Marxism
» Religious and moral developments in Russian literature and philosophy
» SAINT-SIMON, HENRI DE (1760–1825)
» SAY, JEAN-BAPTISTE (1767–1832)
» RICHARD WHATMORE SCHELLING, F.W.J. (1775–1854)
» SCHLEGEL, CARL WILHELM FRIEDRICH VON (1772–1829)
» CLIVE E.HILL SIEYÈS, EMMANUEL-JOSEPH (1748– 1836)
» RICHARD WHATMORE SIMMEL, GEORG (1858–1918)
» DAN STONE SISMONDI, JEAN-CHARLES-LÉONARD SIMONDE DE (1773–1842)
» Social Darwinism and politics
» Social Darwinism, secularism and religion
» MICHAEL LEVIN SOREL, GEORGES (1847–1922)
» SPENCER, HERBERT (1820–1903)
» CLIVE E.HILL STEWART, DUGALD (1753–1828)
» TIM KIRK STRAUSS, DAVID FRIEDRICH (1808–74)
» TAGORE, RABINDRANATH (1861–1941)
» S.JONES THEORIES OF EDUCATION AND CHARACTER FORMATION
» THEORIES OF LAW, CRIMINOLOGY AND PENAL REFORM
» JOHN PRATT THEORIES OF THE STATE AND SOCIETY: THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS
» THIERS, LOUIS-ADOLPHE (1797–1877)
» GEORGIOS VAROUXAKIS THOREAU, HENRY DAVID (1817–62)
» ALAN D.HODDER TOCQUEVILLE, ALEXIS DE (1805–59)
» EVELINA BARBASHINA TÖNNIES, FERDINAND (1855–1936)
» Middle and late nineteenth-century utopianism LIBERALISM, CONSERVATISM AND UTOPIANISM
» LATER NINETEENTH-CENTURY SOCIALISM
» GREGORY CLAEYS WASHINGTON, BOOKER T. (1856–1915)
» CLIVE E.HILL WEBER, MAX (1864–1920)
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