(Go to summary of review by Margaret Oliphant, 'Modern Light Literature - Art', Blackwood's Magazine, December 1855, pp. 702-17.)
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We will let Mr Ruskin explain for himself what an 'idea of imitation' is:-
Whenever anything looks like what it is not, the resemblance
Go to
the passage in Modern Painters I
being so
great as nearly to deceive, we feel a kind of pleasurable
surprise, an
agreeable excitement of mind, exactly the same in its
nature as that
which we receive from juggling. Whenever we per-
ceive this in something-produced
by art, that is to say, whenever
the work is seen to resemble something
which we know it is not,
we receive what I call an idea of imitation.
Why such ideas are
pleasing, it would be out of our present purpose to
inquire; we
only know that there is no man who does not feel pleasure
in his
animal nature from gentle surprise, and that such surprise can
be
excited in no more distinct manner than by the evidence that a
thing
is not what it appears to be.' Now two things are requisite
to our complete
and most pleasurable perception of this; first, that
the resemblance
be so perfect as to amount to a deception; secondly,
that there be some
means of proving at the same moment that it is
a deception. The most
perfect ideas and pleasures of imitation are,
therefore, when one sense
is contradicted by another, both bearing
as positive evidence on the
subject as each is capable of alone; as
when the eye says a thing is
round, and the finger says it is flat;
they are, therefore, never felt
in so high a degree as in painting,
where appearance of projection, roughness,
hair, velvet, &c. are given
with a smooth surface, or in wax-work,
where the first evidence of
the senses is perpetually contradicted by
their experience; but the
moment we come to marble, our definition checks
us, for a marble
figure does not look like what it is not: it looks like
marble, and
like the form of a man, but then it is marble, and it is
the form
of a man. It does not look like a man, which it is not, but
like
the form of a man, which it is. Form is form, bona fide and
actual, whether
in marble or in flesh-not an imitation or resem
blance of form, but real
form. The chalk outline of the bough
of a tree on paper, is not an imitation
; it looks like chalk and
paper-not like wood, and that which it suggests
to the mind is
not properly said to be like the form of a bough, it is
the form
of a bough. Now, then, we see the limits of an idea of imitation;
it
extends only to the sensation of trickery and deception occasioned
by
a thing's intentionally seeming different from what it is; and the
degree
of the pleasure depends on the degree of difference and the
perfection
of the resemblance, not on the nature of the thing
resembled. The simple
pleasure in the imitation would be precisely
of the same degree (if the
accuracy could be equal), whether the
subject of it were the hero or
his horse. There are other collateral
sources of pleasure, which are
necessarily associated with this, but
that part of the pleasure which
depends on the imitation is the
same in both.
Ideas of imitation,
then, act by producing the simple pleasure of
surprise, and that not
of surprise in its higher sense and function,
but of the mean and paltry
surprise which is felt in jugglery. These
ideas and pleasures are the
most contemptible which can be received
from art[.]
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He looks bravely in your face all the time... but... he has managed to slip the wicked weapon up his sleeve; and when you come to see him in full career against artistical honours and reputations, you will find out the value of these two sets of principles, and their newly-established antagonism. The knot of difficulty is cut in the most expeditious manner possible. When Mr Ruskin dislikes a picture, he calls all its truthfulness, Imitation - when it has the wonderful good fortune to please him, he receives all its imitation as Truth. (p. 705)
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We believe it is a common enough idea to imagine Mr Ruskin a great authority and influence in art. We cannot for a moment consent that he is so. Mr Ruskin is a great writer; and if it pleased him to expatiate upon smoky chimneys instead of great pictures, we do not doubt for a moment that he could charm us into interest, and make grander 'effects' of smoke and flame, the fierce tricks of the fire-spirit, and the picturesque glimmers of the fireside light, than anything yet achieved by Mr Millais... but the majority of Mr Ruskin's admirers, to our thinking, admire and throng after him, not for, but despite of his principles in art... the real reputation of Mr Ruskin, which, so far as we are able to judge, is not founded upon any real wisdom or insight into the mysteries of art, but is a pure issue of the powers of literature, - a tribute, not to able theories or judicious investigation, or wise criticism, but to a wealth of language, and fulness of fancy - the gifts of the great writer -seldom before brought into vigorous exercise in this separate field. (p.708)
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