Event Details

In this session Kelly Freeman (UCL) will draw the series to a conclusion by reflecting on the importance of the concept of the skeleton to Ruskin’s explorations of structures in nature, from the animal body to plant and rock formations.

Abstract. Metaphors are an integral part of language. The literary critic and art historian Elizabeth K. Helsinger argued that, for Ruskin, ‘metaphors express visual information important to the painter-topographer in the form of a strong distinctive impression, a central thought that is the mark of imaginative vision’ (Ruskin and the Art of the Beholder). As a consequence of his unique imaginative vision, powers of perception and particular observational skills, John Ruskin utilised the skeleton metaphor recurrently in his works.The word – skeleton – invokes the very essence of a thing; the very lines of its make-up, the essence of its articulated structure. For Ruskin, it became a term for addressing structures in nature, from the animal body to plant and rock formations. The image of the skeleton also seems to embody the very notion of gothicness: savage, changeful, natural, grotesque, rigid and redundant. In this paper I will discuss the significance of the skeleton metaphor in Ruskin’s writings,lectures and drawings. In Ruskin's own account, drawing provided a means of seeing the ‘composition’ of nature and, as I will argue, the skeleton metaphor became for Ruskin a means of seeing organic entities and the structure of nature in a particular way. The organic materiality of the metaphor, typically bone (in bodies) and iron (in buildings), allowed Ruskin to think holistically and ecologically about skeletons, enabling the unification of ‘mental expression’ with ‘material form’that he so desperately sought in The Stones of Venice.