Lectures on Art

John Ruskin (1819–1900) is a famous English art historian and theorist, poet, publicist, author of works on ethics, aesthetics, and natural science, social reformer. In his universal system, art and architecture exist in close connection with morality, religion, human life, and ultimately with nature, while the industrial revolution and the capitalization of society prove equally destructive to the environment, human souls, and the creative process.
The history of art in Ruskin's interpretation resembles academic courses the least, yet he was the first professor of fine arts at the University of Oxford, compelling the 'deaf... to hear and the blind — to see,' as his student Oscar Wilde attested, with his 'filled with passionate fervor and wonderful music' speeches.
The treatises 'The Seven Lamps of Architecture' (1849) and 'Lectures on Art' (1870), which are included in this book, are the alpha and omega of John Ruskin's art studies, an original and sometimes paradoxical thinker, whose reflections captivate with the precision of insights.