the essay on The Nature of Gothic by Ruskin apparently was a revelation for his contemporaries. I tried to buy this in Charing Cross Road the other day and was informed that many people were buying Ruskin and the book of essays I wanted was unavailable. To quote from an essay by Furneaux Jordan, this was the first writing “to see a link between art and labour, to see that the savage ruggedness of a northern cathedral might be humanly—and therefore aesthetically—a more tender, a nobler thing than the classical formulae of the Mediterranean styles: the one produced by men and the other by slaves.” This is as exciting a conception today as then.
That an age reveals itself by its culture we are learning from our own times. What, however, I am personally not certain of is whether that culture appears inevitably or whether artists are aware that an age is marked culturally and therefore they must make that mark. What comes first? One is tempted to say, and no doubt history can prove, that artists unconsciously reflect the age. But this means: God help the joyous artist in a sordid age! On the other hand someone once said “truth is not merely what is but what can be.” There is hope.