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alanffm's review against another edition
4.0
This collection of essays includes a chapter from the book The Seven Lamps, which is great. I really love Ruskin and his take on architecture is truly timeless. That being said I find it hard to give this collection five stars as a) Ruskin is not the best writer b) he ties in 'the masses' in unnecessary places and c) his religiously inspired antisemitism is way to toxic to ignore. These problems are all highlighted in the speeches and secondary essays packaged in this Penguin Great Ideas edition.
All that being said, I strongly recommend reading the excerpt from The Seven Lamps. Like His The Stones of Venice, it is a work of genius and explores the importance of architecture as a way of reliving history and understanding a nation's true essence.
All that being said, I strongly recommend reading the excerpt from The Seven Lamps. Like His The Stones of Venice, it is a work of genius and explores the importance of architecture as a way of reliving history and understanding a nation's true essence.
cryo_guy's review against another edition
3.0
Hey! Ruskin is a pretty clever writer. I like that he liked Turner, but I'm not wild about that whole Whistler debacle that ended up bankrupting him. For shame Ruskin (but I guess he had some brain disorder? I'm not really a historical conspiracy theorist). Anyway! Ruskin can turn a phrase and these are definitely speech-like essays. Here are my collected short and very clever summaries:
Essay 1: When you build a house you should build it with care and with quality so that it endures. People laughably don't do this! (Ruskin is a bit of a pompous aristocrat about it-who would have guessed!?)
Essay 2: Hello students of this art school. Teaching art is best done by cultivating a sense of art itself for itself. If done for any other reason, then the means become the end-e.g. the school you are in. People laughably don't reflect on this.
Essay 3: At least books give us access to the knowledge of the wise who are dead. Cultivating the ability to glean that wisdom, though it affords little more than more clearly defined questions rather than answers, is what might be called virtue in this age where unadulterated virtue is impossible as it is corrupted by a constant and subtle distortion of its proper aim.
End of essay 3: sort of descends into ham-fisted rhetoric lambasting society at large for not investing in knowledge, wisdom, libraries, and the sort. It gets a bit dull but the very end comes back together to make a strong quasi anti-capitalist and pro-education point.
Last essay "Traffic": I've come here to say I can't advise you about how to design your Exchange because you aren't honest with yourselves about what is important in life (majority). But if you want a quick answer, put a statue of Britannia of the Markets with a partridge on her shield. Just remember to feel bad about being inveterate, boorish businessmen.
Essay 1: When you build a house you should build it with care and with quality so that it endures. People laughably don't do this! (Ruskin is a bit of a pompous aristocrat about it-who would have guessed!?)
Essay 2: Hello students of this art school. Teaching art is best done by cultivating a sense of art itself for itself. If done for any other reason, then the means become the end-e.g. the school you are in. People laughably don't reflect on this.
Essay 3: At least books give us access to the knowledge of the wise who are dead. Cultivating the ability to glean that wisdom, though it affords little more than more clearly defined questions rather than answers, is what might be called virtue in this age where unadulterated virtue is impossible as it is corrupted by a constant and subtle distortion of its proper aim.
End of essay 3: sort of descends into ham-fisted rhetoric lambasting society at large for not investing in knowledge, wisdom, libraries, and the sort. It gets a bit dull but the very end comes back together to make a strong quasi anti-capitalist and pro-education point.
Last essay "Traffic": I've come here to say I can't advise you about how to design your Exchange because you aren't honest with yourselves about what is important in life (majority). But if you want a quick answer, put a statue of Britannia of the Markets with a partridge on her shield. Just remember to feel bad about being inveterate, boorish businessmen.
savanna's review against another edition
3.0
This was a bit of a mixed bag! Though I tend to agree with Ruskin generally, there were a few things in the second essay (Of Kings' Treasuries) I couldn't get on board with. But the man certainly is PASSIONATE about what he believes and I vibe with that.
[read for the Reading Rush 2020]
[read for the Reading Rush 2020]
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