{"id":1132,"date":"2019-03-05T15:21:27","date_gmt":"2019-03-05T15:21:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/the-ruskin\/?p=1132"},"modified":"2019-03-05T15:21:27","modified_gmt":"2019-03-05T15:21:27","slug":"reflecting-on-ruskins-good-looking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/the-ruskin\/2019\/03\/05\/reflecting-on-ruskins-good-looking\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflecting on Ruskin\u2019s Good Looking!"},"content":{"rendered":"

This blog, about her exhibition at Brantwood, ‘Ruskin’s Good Looking!’ is written by Dr Sarah Casey, Senior Lecturer in Drawing and Installation at Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts, Lancaster University<\/strong><\/p>\n

All over the country, indeed all over the world, we are currently celebrating Ruskin\u2019s birth and reflecting on his legacy for the 21st<\/sup> century and beyond. This year, 20th<\/sup> February marked 200 years since Ruskin\u2019s christening. The christening gown worn by the infant Ruskin on that day is one of several garments belonging to Ruskin now on display at Brantwood as part of the exhibition Ruskin\u2019s Good Looking!, <\/em>which celebrated its opening on 24th<\/sup> February. This event is the culmination of a two-year Lancaster University research project, examining Ruskin\u2019s clothes through drawing. The project included testing ideas in The Ruskin\u2019s 2018 seminar series (which took its title from this project, Ruskin\u2019s Good Looking!<\/em>) and public drawing workshops as part of the Being Human<\/em> festival 2018.[1]<\/a> The questions driving this activity are: What is it about drawing that continues to make it a valuable tool of investigation in fields ranging from natural history, to medicine, archaeology and fashion? How might Ruskin\u2019s ideas about drawing be applied in the 21st<\/sup> century to develop new contemporary approaches to object based research?<\/p>\n

Over the past two years I have had the extraordinary privilege to get up close and intimate with Ruskin\u2019s clothing in the Brantwood collection and at nearby Keswick Museum. The research was based on the premise of using Ruskin\u2019s belief in drawing as a means of seeing the world \u2013 a view he clearly expressed in The Elements of Drawing <\/em>(1857): \u201cI believe that the sight is a more important thing than the drawing; and I would rather teach drawing that my pupils learn to love Nature, than teach the looking at nature that they may learn to draw.\u201d Drawing requires us to look and this helps us to understand. \u00a0I applied this view to his own clothing.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Drawing mapping \u00a0the garments<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The first stage was simple \u2013 look, look again, and draw what you see. Using this elementary method, I made 1:1 scale pencil drawings\u00a0 of each garment on graph paper. I called these garment maps. Reflecting on the process, I came to realise a parallel with Ruskin\u2019s methods of \u2018true topology\u2019, delineating what is observed in the landscape leaving \u2018no stone unturned\u2019 \u2026 although in my drawings, the landscape was the more intimate terrain of personal clothing. This was to reveal nuances in the clothing\u2019s construction that might be read as fingerprint of Ruskin\u2019s specific physiology. Artist Louise Bourgeois has described clothing as being like an envelope of a person, bearing the imprint of their body, a history so clear she calls garments \u2018road signs\u2019 to the past.<\/span>[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Laundry
Laundry mark JR 12 95<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

These \u2018road signs\u2019 are evident if we know how to look. Close looking through drawing is a method promoted by curator and \u2018dress detective\u2019 Ingrid Mida from Ryerson University, Toronto who visited Brantwood with me in April 2018 to examine the garments.[3]<\/a> This provided valuable specialist insight into their use and wear. It was a magical moment when Ingrid first unfolded the shirt to find the laundry mark JR 12 95, which, as she writes in her catalogue essay, dates the shirt to December 1895, towards the end of Ruskin\u2019s life.[4]<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

An equally exciting moment was when, studying the seams and crevices of a tailcoat, I discovered a tailors label marked \u2018 John Ruskin Esq.\u2019 affirming that the garment was indeed Ruskin\u2019s and its provenance from his tailor (Stultz Wain & Co. 10 Clifford St London, for those of you interested).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Label
Label in Ruskin’s clothes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

From these intense observational studies, I went on to make a series of wax drawings of the garments. Each garment map was transcribed onto a sheet of Japanese paper soaked in wax, using a simple dressmakers pin. The white marks that are visible are made by nothing more than the pressure of touching the surface.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Drawing
Drawing of Ruskin’s christening gown<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Like breath, or memory, the drawings have a fragile existence and will literally melt away if exposed to heat. As Anuradha Chatterjee\u2019s catalogue explains, Ruskin believed clothing to reflect a person\u2019s soul.[5]<\/a> The wax drawings embrace this idea, taking on a spectral quality that evokes the uncanny sense of absent presence that is felt when examining a person\u2019s clothes and looking into the past.\u00a0 As Ruskin said\u00a0 drawing enables us \u201cto preserve something like a true image of beautiful things that pass away, or which you must yourself leave.\u201d[6]<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Exhibition
Exhibition at Brantwood<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So, if you\u2019re near Brantwood between now and 7th<\/sup> April, do take a look before they disappear\u2026<\/p>\n

To find out more about how this Ruskinian approach to drawing might benefit research in the 21st<\/sup> century, look out for Drawing Investigations: graphic relationships with science, culture and environment<\/em> by Sarah Casey and Gerry Davies due for publication by Bloomsbury later this year.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Sponsored by AHRC, the British Academy and Institute of Advanced Studies, University of London<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Louise Bourgeois in Marie Laure Bernadac, Louise Bourgeois,<\/em> Paris: Flammarion, 2006, p.155.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Supported by a grant from the Arts Council and British Council Artist International Development Fund.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Ingrid Mida \u2018A portrait of John Ruskin through his clothes\u2019 in S. Casey (ed.) Ruskin\u2019s Good Looking! (Lancaster University and Brantwood, 2019), p.13.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Anuradha Chatterjee \u2018Wearing the Soul John Ruskin\u2019s theory of ideal dress\u2019 in S. Casey (ed.) Ruskin\u2019s Good Looking! (Lancaster University and Brantwood, 2019), pp.16-19.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> John Ruskin Elements of Drawing (1857). Letter 1, On First Practice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This blog, about her exhibition at Brantwood, ‘Ruskin’s Good Looking!’ is written by Dr Sarah Casey, Senior Lecturer in Drawing and Installation at Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts, Lancaster University All over the country, indeed all over the world, we are currently celebrating Ruskin\u2019s birth and reflecting on his legacy for the 21st century … Continue reading Reflecting on Ruskin\u2019s Good Looking!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1089,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9OdOv-ig","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/the-ruskin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/the-ruskin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/the-ruskin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/the-ruskin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1089"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/the-ruskin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1132"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/the-ruskin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1178,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/the-ruskin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132\/revisions\/1178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/the-ruskin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/the-ruskin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/the-ruskin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}