What do we mean by truth in relation to visual representation? How do laborers relate to the products of their labor? What is the role of art in a capitalist society? How does the artistic production of an era reflect its social, economic, and moral conditions? What is the relationship between mankind and nature or the environment? These are among the questions that preoccupied John Ruskin (1819–1900) and Karl Marx (1818–1883), protean figures of the nineteenth century whose works raise pressing issues for our own time. The course focuses on the question of the relation of art to social and economic spheres, and to the question of modernity. Marx is a figure of world-historical significance whose early commitment to the aesthetic was overwhelmed by his commitment to economic and political matters. This seminar looks at Marx’s involvement with cultural and aesthetic questions, and examines trends in Marxist thought that emphasize the cultural. Far from being merely an art critic, Ruskin was a figure whose impact was felt across the fields of the history of art, aesthetic theory, museology, theology, architectural history and practice, literature, social criticism, politics, economics, geology, botany, climatology, and every aspect of Victorian life. His prose works run to thirty-nine volumes, and his voluminous correspondence and diaries fill many more. Gifted as a draftsman, he produced a large corpus of watercolors and drawings. The class examines the many facets of Ruskin’s work, aiming to place each in a historical context while also exploring the relevance of his ideas for our contemporary world. The seminar is timed for Ruskin’s bicentennial year and is taught using the exhibition Unto This Last: Two Hundred Years of John Ruskin at the Yale Center for British Art.
Taught by Tim Barringer Fall 2019