John Ruskin was an influential English art critic and social thinker of the Victorian era, who famously argued that the principal concern of the artist is "truth to nature." For Ruskin, this truth entailed more than merely adept technical representation, but rather, should depict the natural world as mankind experiences it, with all the sensations of both beauty and terror it elicits. Today, in a world overwhelmed by industrial development and environmental uncertainty, contemporary artists are discovering new beauties and terrors associated with nature, invoking a sense of the sublime that is uniquely modern. Landscapes after Ruskin explores how a joyful experience of nature is now mixed with a particular dread as the earth and its atmosphere are increasingly touched by human activity. This striking volume probes the contemporary sites of the new sublime--from a steel factory couched in a nature park to the aerial view of a bombed city, and from mutating chromosomes to construction sites in suburbia--through essays by artists, photographers, and art historians, as well as experts in environmental studies and philosophy. Featuring more than fifty awe-inspiring artworks--from world-renowned artists such as Georg Baselitz, Joseph Beuys, Katherine Bradford, Christo, Gustave Courbet, Spencer Finch, Eric Fischl, Andreas Gursky, Naoya Hatakeyama, Anselm Kiefer, Bruce Nauman, Raymond Pettibon, Gerhard Richter, Thomas Ruff, Joel Sternfeld, and Ai Weiwei--Landscapes after Ruskin offers compelling, and at times chilling, insight into the truth of the natural world today.

An innovative and lavishly illustrated account of the art, writings, and global influence of one of the 19th century's most influential thinkers This book presents an innovative portrait of John Ruskin (1819-1900) as artist, art critic, social theorist, educator, and ecological campaigner. Ruskin's juvenilia reveal an early embrace of his lifelong interests in geology and botany, art, poetry, and mythology. His early admiration of Turner led him to identify the moral power of close looking. In The Stones of Venice, illustrated with his own drawings, he argued that the development of architectural style revealed the moral condition of society. Later, Ruskin pioneered new approaches to teaching and museum practice. Influential worldwide, Ruskin's work inspired William Morris, founders of the Labour Party, and Mahatma Gandhi. Through thematic essays and detailed discussions of his works, this book argues that, complex and contradictory, Ruskin's ideas are of urgent importance today. Distributed for the Yale Center for British Art Exhibition Schedule: Yale Center for British Art (September 5-December 8, 2019)

In his 1992 book Campagna Romana. The Countryside of Ancient Rome Joel Sternfeld focused on the ruins of grand structures with a clear warning: great civilizations fall, ours may too. Now in Rome after Rome, containing images from the previous book as well as numerous unpublished pictures, Sternfeld's questions multiply: who are these modern Romans? What is their relationship to the splendor that was? What is the nature of sullied modernity in relation to the Arcadian ideal? Is there, at this late moment, any chance for Utopia? The Campagna, the countryside south and east of Rome occupies a special place in Roman--and human history. With the rise of Ancient Rome, this once polluted, malarial landscape was restored by emperors and thrived with some 20 towns and numerous wealthy villas on the rolling plains among the mighty aqueducts that fed water to Rome. After the city fell, the Campagna once again became desolate and dangerous. The gloomy tombs, broken homes and aqueducts sat in a kind of no man's land for over 1,000 years. To this landscape came the painters: Dürer, Lorrain, Poussin, and later, Corot, Turner, and Americans such as Thomas Cole. In the ruins they sought the origins of Rome's greatness and the meaning of her fall. Later they depicted a place where Roman gods cavorted and mankind lived in a golden age, an Arcadia. Central Rome was rebuilt with Baroque apartments hiding the past: in the Campagna the past was visible and all imaginings possible. Sternfeld juxtaposes the ruins of a powerful, ancient civilization with the new construction and the debris of our own time. Avoiding obvious contrasts, eschewing heavy-handed irony, this contemporary artist draws our attention to both despoliation and lasting beauty; he suggests many reasons for despair, yet he also has something to say about the nobility of the human spirit. Theodore E. Stebbins Jr.

In the outset I must shortly state to you the position which landscape painting and animal painting hold towards the higher branches of art. Landscape painting is the thoughtful and passionate representation of the physical conditions appointed for human existence. It imitates the aspects, and records the phenomena, of the visible things which are dangerous or beneficial to men; and displays the human methods of dealing with these, and of enjoying them or suffering from them, which are either exemplary or deserving of sympathetic contemplation.

Known as a writer on art, architecture, nature, landscape, economics and history, John Ruskin (1819-1900) also produced extraordinary drawings and watercolours that offer insight into the workings of his mind and are testimony to the scrupulous attention he gave to everything that interested him. In his drawings, Ruskin revealed a range of emotional responses, from euphoric delight in pattern, colour and texture to utter despondency at what he came to perceive as the ultimate corruption of all things. Accompanying a landmark exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, and National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, in 2014, this book explores a private but hugely revealing aspect of Ruskin's creative life. -- from back cover.

Volume 1-35, works. Volume 36-37, letters. Volume 38 provides an extensive bibliography of Ruskin's writings and a catalogue of his drawings, with corrections to earlier volumes in George Allen's Library Edition of the Works of John Ruskin. Volume 39, general index.