Ruskin on Painting and the Image: Two Recent Accounts by T.J. Clark and Thomas Pfau
Paul Tucker
This essay aims to initiate investigation of John Ruskin’s concept of the image across his entire career and as constituting the thematic core of his work. As a first step – with a view to assessing what light they throw on what is here termed Ruskin’s «iconology-in-progress» – it considers recent accounts of his writings by the art historian T.J. Clark and the literary scholar Thomas Pfau. Within the context of Western culture and its history, these explore, respectively, painting’s privileged unconcern with religious or political ideology and the ontological and phenomenological status of the image as a medium of being and truth. What each has to say about Ruskin is disappointingly limited in scope. On the other hand, that he should form a link between two such radically divergent projects not only is a sign of their equally if differently partial view of him but may also be considered to foretoken a more closely focused and comprehensive analysis of his ever-evolving, multivalent image concept.