John Ruskin: “the Great Spirit of nature is as deep and unapproachable in the lowest as in the noblest objects”

John Ruskin

The chapter “Of the Foreground” in the first volume of John Ruskin’s Modern Painters ends:

One lesson, however, we are invariably taught by all, however approached or viewed, that the work of the Great Spirit of nature is as deep and unapproachable in the lowest as in the noblest objects; that the Divine mind is as visible in its full energy of operation on every lowly bank and mouldering stone, as in the lifting of the pillars of heaven, and settling the foundation of the earth; and that to the rightly perceiving mind, there is the same infinity, the same majesty, the same power, the same unity, and the same perfection, manifest in the casting of the clay as in the scattering of the cloud, in the mouldering of the dust as in the kindling of the daystar. (3.492 — 93)

For more about and by John Ruskin, please see:
John Ruskin, Giotto, and William Henry Fox Talbot.

Another quote from John Ruskin:
John Ruskin: “You must either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him”

John Ruskin: “You must either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him”

Self Portrait
by John Ruskin

John Ruskin had some typically heterodox thoughts on perfection that go well beyond the usual — and often excellent — thought that “the perfect is the enemy of the good.”

. . . no good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art. This for two reasons, both based on everlasting laws. The first, that no great man ever stops working till he has reached his point of failure; that is to say, his mind is always far in advance of his powers of execution. . . . The second reason is, that imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that is to say, of a state of progress and change.

––John Ruskin; The Stones of Venice (II, chapter 6)

In the same book, The Stones of Venice, he makes a different ethical point when he says,

Degas, Rembrandt, and Sargent

This post continues my Story Structure series.

Self-Portrait (1850s)
by Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas

A Woman Seated Beside a Vase of Flowers (Madame Paul Valpinçon?) (1865)
by Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas

John Ruskin, Giotto, and William Henry Fox Talbot

This post continues my Story Structure series.

Scenes from the Life of Christ: 10. Entry into Jerusalem (1304-6) by Giotto

(Click pictures to enlarge)

For those readers who are puzzled why I’ve posted so many entries about old art but implied they’re relevant to new stories — and to screenplays — I offer the following quote from the great Victorian era critic, John Ruskin.

(excerpt from)
Giotto and his Works in Padua

by

John Ruskin

But what, it may be said by the reader, is the use of the works of Giotto to us?

Jan van Eyck — The Arnolfini Wedding

This post continues my Story Structure series.

The Arnolfini Wedding (1434) by Jan van Eyck

Sassetta (approximately)

This post continues my Story Structure series.

What does it mean to tell a story?

I think one of the valid reasons that people often stress 3-act structure in screenplays is that it’s one way of making sure that we write stories that progress and unfold in time, rather than being static snapshots.

Still, some paintings are phenomenal in their ability to suggest stories. The following 3 paintings are by Sassetta, who lived during the transition between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. They’re part of a much larger series depicting the life of Saint Anthony.

Perugino and Raphael

This post continues my Story Structure series.

Here are three similar paintings:

Christ Delivering the Keys of the Kingdom to Saint Peter
by Pietro di Cristoforo Vannucci (1445?-1523), called Perugino

Two Frescoes, by Giotto and by Taddeo Gaddi

This post is the second in a new series, Story Structure.

In this entry, I write about two Renaissance frescoes with the same title, and try to relate them to the idea of story structure — or, especially screenplay structure, about which so much has been said.

The meeting of Joachim and Anna by Giotto, c. 1305.

The meeting of Joachim and Anna by Taddeo Gaddi, 1338.

Here’s what a standard art history book says about these paintings.

Pieter Brueghel and W.H. Auden

This post begins a new series, Story Structure.

Pieter Brueghel, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

Keeping focus — ratcheting up the tension

You know what “they” tell us: “Icarus is your main character. Keep focus on him. Make sure he’s got motivation. Make sure he’s got an antagonist. Make sure every scene ratchets up the tension.”

Well, that’s “their” humble opinion.

Pieter Brueghel, in his painting The Fall of Icarus, and W.H. Auden, in his poem, Musée des Beaux Arts, about the painting, seem to have other ideas.

. . . every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite

A post in the ongoing series Poetry in the Arts.

In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, William Blake wrote about the “doors of perception.”

The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years is true, as I have heard from Hell.

For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at tree of life, and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed, and appear infinite, and holy whereas it now appears finite & corrupt.

This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment.

But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul, is to be expunged: this I shall do, by printing in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid.

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.

For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.

What does Blake mean when he says that if “the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite?”

Why is the world “infinite?” And if it is, what does perception have to do with it?

I’m not sure about what Blake thought, but I have my own personal theories.

Emily Dickinson — I could not stop for death

A post in the ongoing series Poetry in the Arts.

Because I could not stop for Death
by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
and Immortality.

We slowly drove — He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility —

Politics, the Polis, aloofness, and involvement

Parthenon, North Frieze

J. J. Pollitt’s The Art of Ancient Greece is a book that I’ve learned much from — and plan to write several entries about. I’m grateful to Pollitt.

In one place in this book, though, he makes some remarks about the relation of Greek philosophers to the political scene around them that I can’t agree with.

The Schools in the Academy and the Lyceum were private, voluntary associations, unsubsidized and unsupervised by the state. Within them political questions might often be examined and data about governmental institutions were collected, but such activities were engaged in primarily for the private satisfaction of the members of the schools, not as a service to society in general.

The battle of the statues in Wyman Park

A post in the ongoing series Poetry in the Arts.

Wyman Park is in Baltimore, just in front of the Baltimore Museum of Art and near the Homewood Campus of the Johns Hopkins University. It has two statues, not far from each other.

The first statue has an inscription on its base saying that it represents Stonewall Jackson saying farewell to Robert E. Lee at Chancellorsville. Another inscription explains that the statue was donated by a private individual.

One inscription at the top of the base reports Jackson as saying, “So great is my confidence in General Lee that I would follow him anywhere.” The other quotes Lee as saying, “Straight as the needle to the pole Jackson advanced to the execution of my purpose.”

Édouard Manet — clothed and unclothed

A post in the ongoing series Poetry in the Arts.

Here are two contrasting paintings: by Bouguereau and by Édouard Manet.
(Click to enlarge.)

Nymphs and Satyr (1873) by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Dejeuner sur L’Herbe (1863) by Édouard Manet

We think of Victorians as super-prudes. And yet paintings like Bouguereau’s Nymphs and Satyr were not considered pornographic then — they were the essence of refined taste.