Murdo Macdonald
RUSKIN’S TRIANGLE, 2021
RUSKIN’S TRIANGLE, 2021
Ruskin was a prosaic man. He did not, could not, transcend. Or am I writing about myself? In an attempt to transcend prose at least I am tempted to call Ruskin ‘mosaic’ rather than prosaic. For like Ruskin, I want to play: and this one word is in fact two, one that means pertaining to the muses (as in mosaic floor) and the other that means pertaining to Moses (as in Mosaic law).
This is an essay about the uneasiness inherent in culture. It is about sex and death. It is about art. It is about iconoclasm. It is about Ruskin. It is about Venice. It is about places and their modulation in memory: the marble quarry on Iona, the battlefield of Culloden, Freud’s study, astrological murals in Padua, Iceland, Japan. It touches on thinkers, both verbal and visual. It is about the nature of space and time. It is about things seen. It is about a fluctuation from nothing. It is about the paintings of Turner and Claude. It is about libraries burned out and remade. It is about translations. It is about empire. It is about Courbet’s L’Origine du monde. It is about denial. It is about the dust of the rose petal. It is about the absorption of light. It is about Eros and Kali. It is about museums and echoes.
‘Lyrical, probing, wide-ranging, fruitfully combining the academic with the personal and creative—this fascinating essay is much more than an investigation of Ruskin’s complex poetics. Leading the reader into an unexpected journey across countries (with Italy and Scotland often taking centre-stage), juxtaposing works of art and artistic visions, and threading together apparently unrelated details and reflections, it eventually incorporates Ruskin’s ethical lesson by providing a final, riveting (if only temporary) vision of creative unity.’
–> Carla Sassi
Murdo Macdonald is an art historian, the author of Scottish Art in Thames and Hudson’s World of Art series (new edition 2021) and Patrick Geddes’s Intellectual Origins (Edinburgh University Press, 2020). He is a former editor of Edinburgh Review. An honorary member of the Royal Scottish Academy and an honorary fellow of the Association for Scottish Literary Studies, he is professor emeritus of history of Scottish art at the University of Dundee.
This is an essay about the uneasiness inherent in culture. It is about sex and death. It is about art. It is about iconoclasm. It is about Ruskin. It is about Venice. It is about places and their modulation in memory: the marble quarry on Iona, the battlefield of Culloden, Freud’s study, astrological murals in Padua, Iceland, Japan. It touches on thinkers, both verbal and visual. It is about the nature of space and time. It is about things seen. It is about a fluctuation from nothing. It is about the paintings of Turner and Claude. It is about libraries burned out and remade. It is about translations. It is about empire. It is about Courbet’s L’Origine du monde. It is about denial. It is about the dust of the rose petal. It is about the absorption of light. It is about Eros and Kali. It is about museums and echoes.
‘Lyrical, probing, wide-ranging, fruitfully combining the academic with the personal and creative—this fascinating essay is much more than an investigation of Ruskin’s complex poetics. Leading the reader into an unexpected journey across countries (with Italy and Scotland often taking centre-stage), juxtaposing works of art and artistic visions, and threading together apparently unrelated details and reflections, it eventually incorporates Ruskin’s ethical lesson by providing a final, riveting (if only temporary) vision of creative unity.’
–> Carla Sassi
Murdo Macdonald is an art historian, the author of Scottish Art in Thames and Hudson’s World of Art series (new edition 2021) and Patrick Geddes’s Intellectual Origins (Edinburgh University Press, 2020). He is a former editor of Edinburgh Review. An honorary member of the Royal Scottish Academy and an honorary fellow of the Association for Scottish Literary Studies, he is professor emeritus of history of Scottish art at the University of Dundee.
120 pages
105 mm x 170 mm
60 mm French flaps (cover)
Format: Paperback
ISBN 978-1-910055-87-8
£10.00
Second printing now available
To special bundles offer ->
Next Book ->
105 mm x 170 mm
60 mm French flaps (cover)
Format: Paperback
ISBN 978-1-910055-87-8
£10.00
Second printing now available
To special bundles offer ->
Next Book ->