Ruskin's ‘Biped’ Truth

Review Article Ruskin's 'Biped' Truth IRA BRUCE NADEL Robert Hewison. John Ruskin: The Argument of the Eye Princeton University Press 1976. 228. illustrations. $15.00 Jay Fellows. The Failing Distance: The Autobiographical Impulse in John Ruskin Johns Hopkins University Press 1975187 . $10·95 John Unrau. Looking at Architecture with Ruskin University.ofToronto Press 1978.180. illustrations. $15.00 U.c. KnoepAmacherand G.B. Tennyson , editors. Nature and the Victorian Imagination University of California Press 1977. 519, illustrations. $25.00 ... the more I see of useful truths, the more I find that, like human beings, they are eminently biped; [but] .,' they are usually seen in a crane-like posture, standing on one leg. Ruskin's statement from Modem Painters III marks a critical issue in the study of his writing: can he be understood completely or must he, like 'useful truths,' be evaluated only on 'one leg'? Is there a way to merge his singular roles of artist, critic, economist, historian, and reformer into a unified interpretation? In the past the diverse and occasionally contradictory interests and ideas of Ruskin prevented critics from forming coherent concepts and harmonizing theories to synthetize his work. But a persistent concern to unite Ruskin's heterogeneous writings exists, a concern epitomized by Turner when he saw his own paintings isolated on drawing-room walls and asked: 'What is the use of them but to- . gether?' Various critics in the last twenty years have offered numerous designs for understanding the whole of Ruskin's work but they have frequently relied on outworn conceptions, most notably the myth of Ruskin as the divided Victorian or flawed romantic. Others have justified a uni fled vision through a characteristic Victorian eclecticism or multiplicity; as John D. Rosenberg has summarized, 'the whole of Ruskin's opus is dedicated to the Oneness of the many.' To the extent that Ruskin thought in terms of 'Oneness' this is valid, but such a theory fails to UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME XLIX, NUMBER 2, WINTER 1979/80°°42-°247/80/0100-0166$00.00/0 © UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS recognize the way Ruskin's unity, according to more recent writers, progresses by opposition. Dynamic opposition, they argue, shapes the harmony of Ruskin's thought, as this 1848 Dian) passage suggests: 'all forms are ... either indicative of lines of energy, or pressure, or motion, variously impressed or resisted, and are therefore exquisitely abstract and precise.' But such 'positive forms in defense of paradox' were an offence to readers, as Arnold noted. Ruskin himself promoted the image of self-contradiction, declaring, for example , in his 'Inaugural Address' to the Cambridge School of Art that 'for myself, I am never satisfied that I have handled a subject properly till I have contradicted myself at least three times: None the less, the volumes reviewed here in various ways attempt to establish a unified vision of Ruskin and his work. Their success or failure tests the possibility of such an effort and suggests the nature of Ruskin criticism today. Have we found ways to see Ruskin whole? This is the question his readers continue to ask. Robert Hewison in Ruskin, The Argument of the Eye believes that we can comprehend Ruskin in his entirety through his visual imagination and the images it establishes which are 'the constructs' of his arguments. These images are central for understanding Ruskin because they are both the content and form of his aesthetic. Hewison argues that the visual dimension of Ruskin - his presentation and analysis of actual objects - is not a weakness but his strength. His vision, not his reason, clarifies and unifies his work according to Hewison, who stresses that the tension between Ruskin's verbal constructions and visual images 'can be reduced to a conflict between word and picture: As critic and draughtsman Ruskin found conflict but resolved it in his prose and thought through the unity of visual sensation and intellectual concepts which made art simultaneously practical and symbolic. Hewison perceives Ruskin dialectically, although a synthesis emerges in the term theoria which appears in Modern Painters n . Meaning both the process of perceiving sensations and the highest intellectual activities, theoria embodies for Ruskin the duality that Hewison argues resolves...