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| Author | John Ruskin |
|---|---|
| Country | UK |
| Language | English |
| Published | 1871–1884 |
Fors Clavigera: Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain was the name given by John Ruskin to a series of letters addressed to British workmen during the 1870s. They were published in the form of pamphlets. The letters formed part of Ruskin's interest in moral intervention in the social issues of the day on the model of his mentor Thomas Carlyle.
The phrase "Fors Clavigera" was intended to designate three great powers which form human destiny. These were: Force, symbolised by the club (clava) of Hercules; Fortitude, symbolised by the key (clavis) of Ulysses; and Fortune, symbolised by the nail (clavus) of Lycurgus. These three powers (the "fors") together represent the human talent and ability to choose the right moment and then to strike with energy. The concept is derived from Shakespeare's phrase "There is a tide in the affairs of men / Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune". Ruskin believed that the letters were inspired by the Third Fors: that he was striking out at the right moment to influence social change. [1]
The letters of Fors Clavigera were written on a variety of topics that Ruskin believed would help to communicate his moral and social vision as expressed in his 1860 book Unto This Last . He was principally concerned to develop a vision of moral value in sincere labour. Phillip Mallett called them "in effect the resumption of the concerns of Carlyle's Past and Present in another form." [2] Ruskin himself wrote in one letter that his work was done with Carlyle as the only man in England "to whom I can look for steady guidance." [3]
It was in Fors Clavigera that Ruskin published his attack on the paintings of James McNeill Whistler exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1877. He attacked them as the epitome of capitalist production in art, created with minimum effort for maximum output. [4] One of the most powerful sentences was "I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face." [5] Ruskin's abusive language led Whistler to sue for libel. Whistler won the case, but only got one farthing in damages. Ruskin withdrew from art criticism for a period following the case.
James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American painter in oils and watercolor, and printmaker, active during the American Gilded Age and based primarily in the United Kingdom. He eschewed sentimentality and moral allusion in painting and was a leading proponent of the credo "art for art's sake".
John Ruskin was an English writer, philosopher, art historian, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy.
Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish essayist, historian, and philosopher from the Scottish Lowlands. A leading writer of the Victorian era, he exerted a profound influence on 19th-century art, literature, and philosophy.
Aestheticism was an art movement in the late 19th century that valued the appearance of literature, music, fonts and the arts over their functions. According to Aestheticism, art and fonts should be produced to be beautiful, rather than to teach a lesson, create a parallel, or perform another didactic purpose, a sentiment best illustrated by the slogan "art for art's sake." Aestheticism flourished in the 1870s and 1880s, gaining prominence and the support of notable writers such as Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde.
Charles Eliot Norton was an American author, social critic, and Harvard professor of art based in New England. He was a progressive social reformer and a liberal activist whom many of his contemporaries considered the most cultivated man in the United States. He was from the same notable Eliot family as the 20th-century poet T. S. Eliot, who made his career in the United Kingdom.
Art for art's sake—the usual English rendering of l'art pour l'art, a French slogan from the latter half of the 19th century—is a phrase that expresses the philosophy that 'true' art is utterly independent of any and all social values and utilitarian function, be that didactic, moral, or political. Such works are sometimes described as autotelic, a concept that has been expanded to embrace "inner-directed" or "self-motivated" human beings.
Didacticism is a philosophy that emphasizes instructional and informative qualities in literature, art, and design. In art, design, architecture, and landscape, didacticism is a conceptual approach that is driven by the urgent need to explain.
Events from the year 1877 in art.
Unto This Last is an essay critical of economics by John Ruskin, who published the first chapter between August and December 1860 in the monthly journal Cornhill Magazine in four articles.
The Guild of St George is a charitable Education Trust, based in England but with a worldwide membership, which tries to uphold the values and put into practice the ideas of its founder, John Ruskin (1819–1900).
Latter-Day Pamphlets was a series of "pamphlets" published by Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle in 1850, in vehement denunciation of what he believed to be the political, social, and religious imbecilities and injustices of the period.
Monsal Dale is a valley in Derbyshire, England, in the White Peak limestone area of the Peak District National Park. It is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), a Special Area of Conservation (SAC) (1) and part of a Europe-wide network called Natura 2000.
The Gentle Art of Making Enemies is a book by the painter James McNeill Whistler, published in London in 1890 by William Heinemann, who also published a second, enlarged edition in 1892. The book was in part a response to, in part a transcript of, Whistler's famous libel suit against critic John Ruskin. Ruskin, in a review of the inaugural showing at the Grosvenor Gallery, had referred to Whistler's painting Nocturne in Black and Gold – The Falling Rocket as "flinging a pot of paint in the public's face". The book contains Whistler's letters to newspapers chronicling his many petty grievances against various acquaintances and friends, and it contains his famous 1885 lecture, "Ten O'Clock", explaining "the meaning and purpose of art".
Past and Present is a book by the Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle. It was published in April 1843 in England and the following month in the United States. It combines medieval history with criticism of 19th-century British society. Carlyle wrote it in seven weeks as a respite from the harassing labor of writing Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches. He was inspired by the recently published Chronicles of the Abbey of Saint Edmund's Bury, which had been written by Jocelin of Brakelond at the close of the 12th century. This account of a medieval monastery had taken Carlyle's fancy, and he drew upon it in order to contrast the monks' reverence for work and heroism with the sham leadership of his own day.
Traditionalist conservatism, often known as classical conservatism, is a political and social philosophy that emphasizes the importance of transcendent moral principles, manifested through certain posited natural laws to which it is claimed society should adhere. It is one of many different forms of conservatism. Traditionalist conservatism, as known today, is based on Edmund Burke's political views as well as the views of Joseph de Maistre. Traditionalists value social ties and the preservation of ancestral institutions above what they perceive as excessive individualism. One of the first uses of the phrase "conservatism" began around 1818 with a monarchist newspaper named "Le Conservateur", written by Francois Rene de Chateaubriand with the help of Louis de Bonald.
Nocturne in Black and Gold – The Falling Rocket is a c. 1875 painting by James McNeill Whistler held in the Detroit Institute of Arts. The painting exemplified the Art for art's sake movement – a concept formulated by Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier and Charles Baudelaire.
Critique of political economy or simply the first critique of economy is a form of social critique that rejects the conventional ways of distributing resources. The critique also rejects what its advocates believe are unrealistic axioms, faulty historical assumptions, and taking conventional economic mechanisms as a given or as transhistorical. The critique asserts the conventional economy is merely one of many types of historically specific ways to distribute resources, which emerged along with modernity.
Blanche Isabella Atkinson was an English novelist and author of children's books. She is also noted for her correspondence and friendship with the influential art critic John Ruskin.
A statue of Thomas Carlyle by Joseph Edgar Boehm stands in Chelsea Embankment Gardens in London. Erected in 1881 and unveiled in 1882, it stands close to 24 Cheyne Row where Carlyle lived for the last 47 years of his life. The statue became a Grade II listed building on 15 April 1969.
The Ruskin Monument is a memorial to John Ruskin located on the edge of Derwentwater in the English Lakes at Friars' Crag, Keswick, Cumbria. It was erected on 6 October 1900, shortly after his death, largely through the efforts of Hardwicke Rawnsley.
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