Ruskin's Triangle - Murdo Macdonald
Murdo Macdonald
Ma Bibliotheque, ISBN 9781910055878,
Pb, 120 pgs, 10 x 17cm
Acqn. 33547
In Stock
£10.00
Pb, 120 pgs, 10 x 17cm
Acqn. 33547
In Stock
£10.00
Ruskin was a prosaic man. He did not, could not, transcend. Or am I writing about myself? In an attempt to transcend prose at least I am tempted to call Ruskin 'mosaic' rather than prosaic. For like Ruskin, I want to play: and this one word is in fact two, one that means pertaining to the muses (as in mosaic floor) and the other that means pertaining to Moses (as in Mosaic law).
This is an essay about the uneasiness inherent in culture. It is about sex and death. It is about art. It is about iconoclasm. It is about Ruskin. It is about Venice. It is about places and their modulation in memory: the marble quarry on Iona, the battlefield of Culloden, Freud's study, astrological murals in Padua, Iceland, Japan. It touches on thinkers, both verbal and visual. It is about the nature of space and time. It is about things seen. It is about a fluctuation from nothing. It is about the paintings of Turner and Claude. It is about libraries burned out and remade. It is about translations. It is about empire. It is about Courbet's L'Origine du monde. It is about denial. It is about the dust of the rose petal. It is about the absorption of light. It is about Eros and Kali. It is about museums and echoes.