Abstract
If the collapse of the building guild experiment meant the demise of the Ruskinian tradition per se, it did not mark the end of Ruskinian influence on architectural thought. On the contrary, Ruskinian ideas continued to play a major part in twentieth-century thought. In particular, modernism, which has been widely seen as the dominant strand in architectural thought between the 1920s and the 1960s, drew to a significant extent on the Ruskinian tradition, developing partly in reaction to, but also partly in continuation of, the main postulates of the Ruskinian position.
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Notes and References
N. Pevsner, Pioneers of the Modern Movement from William Morris to Walter Gropius (London, 1936) p. 137.
N. Pevsner, ‘Post-War Tendencies in German Art Schools’, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, 84 (17 January 1936) p. 248.
Pevsner, Pioneers of the Modern Movement, pp. 19–20; N. Pevsner, Pioneers of Modern Design from William Morris to Walter Gropius (Harmondsworth, 1960) pp. 19–20.
R. Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (1960) pp. 11–12.
J. Autret, Ruskin and the French before Marcel Proust (Geneva, 1965) pp. 11–37; J. Autret, L’Influence de Ruskin sur la Vie,Les Idées et L’Oeuvre de Marcel Proust (Geneva, 1955) pp. 16–17 and 169–70.
Le Corbusier (1944), quoted in P. V. Turner, The Education of Le Corbusier: A Study of the Development of Le Corbusier’s Thought1900–1920 (Harvard University D.Phil, 1971; New York, 1977) p. 7.
Le Corbusier, L’Art decoratif d’aujord’hui (Paris, 1925) p. 134 (author’s translation); Stones of Venice I, in Ruskin Works 9, pp. 49–52.
Le Corbusier, The Four Routes (French original, Paris, 1941; Eng. trans. 1947) pp. 127–8. I am indebted to Adrian Forty for this reference.
Le Corbusier (trans. F. Etchells), Towards a New Architecture (French original, Paris, 1923; Eng. trans. 1927) p. 23.
Le Corbusier, L’Art decoratif, p. 134. On Le Corbusier and Ruskin, see also M. P. M. Sekler, ‘Le Corbusier, Ruskin, the Tree, and the Open Hand’, in R. Walden (ed.), The Open Hand. Essays on Le Corbusier (Cambridge, Mass., 1977) pp. 42–95.
H. Muthesius, Das Englische Haus (3 vols, Berlin, 1904–1905); Eng. trans. (ed. D. Sharp, trans. J. Seligman), The English House (1979)p. 13. See also
S. Custoza, M. Vogliazzo, J. Posener, Muthesius (Milan, 1981) p. 128.
H.-R. Hitchcock, ‘Ruskin and American Architecture, or Regeneration Long Delayed’, in J. Summerson (ed.), Concerning Architecture. Essays on Architectural Writers and Writing presented to Nikolaus Pevsner (1968) pp. 167 and 206.
W. Gropius, ‘Architecture at Harvard University’, Architectural Record, 81, 5 (May 1937) p. 11.
B. Miller Lane, Architecture and Politics in Germany1918–1945 (Cambridge, Mass., 1968) p. 66. See also
M. Franciscono, Walter Gropius and the Creation of the Bauhaus in Weimar: The Ideals and Artistic Theories of its Founding Years (Urbana, 1971) pp. 13–70.
Gropius, ‘Programm des Staatlichen Bauhauses in Weimar’ (1919), in H. M. Wingler, The Bauhaus. Weimar, Dessau, Berlin, Chicago (Cambridge, Mass., 1969 and 1976) p. 31.
Gropius, ‘The Theory and Organization of the Bauhaus’ (1923), in H. Bayer, I. Gropius and W. Gropius (eds), Bauhaus1919–1928 (Boston, 1952) p. 21. Gropius made the same comment about Ruskin on his arrival at Harvard: Gropius, ‘Education Toward Creative Design’, American Architect and Architecture, 150, 2657 (May 1937) p. 27.
R. B. Stein, John Ruskin and Aesthetic Thought in America, 1840–1900 (Cambridge, Mass., 1967) p. 80; Hitchcock, ‘Ruskin and American Architecture’, p. 172.
Frank Lloyd Wright, ‘In the Cause of Architecture’, Architectural Record, 23, 3 (March 1908) p. 157.
Wright, Ausgeführte Bauten und Entwürfe (Berlin, 1910), in
E. Kaufmann (ed.), An American Architecture; Frank Lloyd Wright (New York, 1955) p. 27.
Frank Lloyd Wright, An Autobiography (1932; New York, 1977) pp. 53 and 73. See also
N. G. Menochal, Architecture as Nature. The Transcendentalist Idea of Louis Sullivan (Madison, Wisc., 1981) pp. 81–5.
J. D. Rosenberg, The Darkening Glass. A Portrait of John Ruskin’s Genius (New York, 1961) pp. 71–6. But see
K. O. Garrigan, Ruskin on Architecture: His Thought and Influence (Madison, Wisc., 1973) pp. 152–4 for the opposing view.
Wright, ‘Organic Architecture’ (1939), in Kaufmann, Frank Lloyd Wright, p. 18.
Wright, ‘Architecture and Modern Life’ (1937), in ibid., p. 20.
Wright, Ausgeführte Bauten (1910) in ibid., p. 26.
Frank Lloyd Wright, An Organic Architecture. The Architecture of Democracy (London, 1939 and 1970) p. 6.
Wright, in the New York Times (1953) in Kaufmann, Frank Lloyd Wright, p. 260.
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© 1989 Mark Swenarton
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Swenarton, M. (1989). Ruskin and the Moderns. In: Artisans and Architects. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19648-7_7
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