‘And the great cry that rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace blast, is all in very deed for this,—that we manufacture everything there except men; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to refine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into our estimate of advantages.” Composed at the very peak of the Industrial Revolution, when Britain stood as Workshop of the World and master of the greatest Empire since the Romans, John Ruskin's “The Stones of Venice” (1851-53) is a stunning jeremiad against all such materialism and modernity.
The three-volume work was an epic of cultural commentary, architectural criticism, and political philosophy—all laid out in elegiac, meditative prose. This year's Ruskin bicentennial (he was born Feb. 8, 1819) is an easy excuse to celebrate the book's magnificence; but, more important, it speaks so powerfully to the transactional nature of contemporary art and architecture, civic life and cultural economy.
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