A passionate and beautifully written book which says a great deal about the author as well as it's subject matter. Ruskin's aesthetic views and high-mindedness might imply impracticality and a view of human beings as stereotypes, distinguished, in Ruskin's day, by class. Not so. I am always struck by Ruskin's thoughts on fair trade and the value that he placed on actual physical work, arguing that ideas and the work which is needed to bring ideas into physical existence have equal value. He depl...

When one mentions John Ruskin, a certain image of a rigid and moralist stance should be unearthed. As the proponent of Theoria in art and its role in making art a meaningful field of life, John Ruskin while talking about Gothic architecture and the uses of iron really does not stray away from his teleological stance when dealing with whatever topic. Indeed, Ruskin in his essay “The Nature of Gothic” explores the features of Gothic architecture and debunks the prejudice that originate from the gr...

Extracts from Ruskin's book The Stones of Venice in which he examines architecture as a way of understanding the political economy, social structure and cultural framework of Britain and other countries he has experienced.Ruskin is radical, humanitarian, visionary. His insight is profound and he champions freedom and creativity as the foundation of artistic work. He refuses to divorce aesthetics from ethics. I completely changed my view of buildings when I read this. In every made thing I now lo...

Nietzsche said that with the death of the sacred, Beauty would continue, albeit accidentally.Mr. John Ruskin, however, set his sights on an earlier age, developing six principles that could be applied to gothic beauty, and in so doing, in my eyes, set down the principles for Beauty in general.The principles are: Rudeness, Changefulness, Naturalness, Grotesqueness, Rigidity and Redundancy.In our post-industrial age, perhaps the most telling is the first, Rudeness. Mr. Ruskin defines Rudeness as t...

3.5 / 5.0As an inclusion in the "Great Ideas" series, On Art and Life falls a bit short, at least from the imaginary standard I've set for such a project. Essentially, Ruskin is espousing humane causes in the face of estranging practices that were burgeoning as a result of industrialisation. He rues the fact that artisanship was on the decline - the loss of unevenness in the surfaces of visual arts, as emblematic of artistic vision and emotion - and that the new capitalist system deprives the fr...

This is brilliant, and full of compassion and humanity, so the best kind of book to me. When I read first several pages, I thought okay, this is going to be a dull and difficult book with all the architectural terms, but the more into it, the more I am attracted by the perceptible enthusiasm Ruskin felt to the subjects of his writing - the prose is beautiful and sometime magnificent, and his wisdom toward life. The second essay is about iron, the rusty iron; I am just amazed by his standpoints -...

Beautiful imagery and powerful thoughts.

I will never look at fences in the same way again! John Ruskin was the original anti-WalMart guy, it would seem, and his ideas on responsible consumerism and dignity will stay with me forever. His ideas on jewels have even prompted me to get a different wedding band--that's some influence from beyond the grave!

“...the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art. 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...”

Part Intro to historical architecture, part socialist critique of Victorian industrialism, part long digression on the nature of iron and rust.

This small book is comprised of a chapter (from another book) on Gothic architecture and a lecture on ironwork. Ruskin had a fine way of making these topics about humanity. It reads very smoothly considering it's from the mid-19th century. Some fine insights mixed with a bit of boredom.

"The law of nature is, that a certain quantity of work is necessary to produce a certain quantity of good, of any kind whatever. If you want knowledge, you must toil for it: if food, you must toil for it: and if pleasure, you must toil for it. But men do not acknowledge this law; or strive to evade it, hoping to get their knowledge, and food, and pleasure for nothing: and in this effort they either fail of getting them, and remain ignorant and miserable, or they obtain them by making other men w...

A must read, beautifully written, perfectly poignant and informative.

There were a few interesting ideas in here... buried among a pile of illogical and often classist, racist and sexist assumptions which go completely unquestioned throughout the book. The arguments are full of inconsistencies (often produced by the writer trying to contort his thoughts to fit in with his prejudices, rather than examine them) - for instance, it is argued at one point that workmen should have freedom of artistic expression, then later a list of completely arbitrary rules around wha...

Really enjoyed Ruskin’s vivacious prose

A strong, if antiquated, little book. Ruskin juxtaposes much. Delineates much. Poetic, strident. The edicts are firm yet perceptive; cogent all the time. Prose: 9Style: 7.5Theses: 9Imagery: 8.5Characters: N/ACohesion: 9Force: 8

After initial getting over my preconceptions of Ruskin (as a niave, god lovin', lets return to the tree's type), I found the first essay beautifully insightful. After what I perceived as a few contradictions, he goes on to correct/absolve his intitial statements by his views on art as imperfect, art as a pursuit of failure, or at least ending in failure. His attitide to life was inspiring in the essay on Gothic art/architecture, his essay on iron I found a little over the top, although at times

This book consists of two sections, "The Nature of Gothic" from Vol. 2 of The Stones of Venice(1853), and "The Work of Iron", originally given as a lecture at Tunbridge Wells, and later published in The Two Paths(1859). I learnt of the importance of Ruskin's influence only recently when watching the movie Mr Turner(2014), starring one of my favourite actors, Timothy Spall, in the lead role. Ruskin was a supporter of the work of J.M.W. Turner and apparently played a role in elevating landscape pa...

Can't say I disagree with anything in this book except, maybe, Ruskin's love for run on sentences. This collection of two influential chapters from his older books highlights the importance of aesthetics and labor in life. Despite being hundreds of years old, Ruskin's critique on the role of buildings & fences, and the human cost of making them, remains as relevant (if not more) today as it was when he wrote it.

Loved it. I felt like I was reading Shakespeare for the first time. Like when you think he wasn't that great because you've heard it all before, but then you realize you've heard it all before because he said it first. Really fun.