The Aesthetics of RuinsThis book constructs a theory of ruins that celebrates their vitality and unity in aesthetic experience. Its argument draws upon over 100 illustrations prepared in 40 countries. Ruins flourish as matter, form, function, incongruity, site, and symbol. Ruin underlies cultural values in cinema, literature and philosophy. Finally, ruin guides meditations upon our mortality and endangered world. |
Contents
15 | |
33 | |
51 | |
77 | |
SIX The Ruin as Symbol | 107 |
NINETEEN Meditations on Humanity Self and | 153 |
SEVEN The Ruin as Aesthetic Experience | 155 |
St Andrews | 173 |
Grin and Bear It | 385 |
Museum of Ruins | 386 |
World as Ruins | 387 |
The Redemption | 396 |
Death | 405 |
The Self | 415 |
The Meaning of Existence | 425 |
World Destruction | 432 |
TEN Nature as Ruin | 201 |
ELEVEN Sculpture and Other Visual Arts as Ruin | 221 |
TWELVE Cinema and Television as Ruin | 237 |
THIRTEEN Literature as Ruin | 253 |
FIFTEEN The Terminology of Ruin | 285 |
SIXTEEN Theories of Ruin | 315 |
SEVENTEEN The Ruining Eyeand Other Senses | 335 |
EIGHTEEN Fragments of a Chapter on Ruin | 355 |
Ruinations | 356 |
Battlefields | 358 |
Psychology of Ruins | 359 |
Nostalgia | 362 |
Time | 363 |
Ruins Put to Use | 364 |
People in the Ruins | 369 |
Domestic Ruins | 370 |
A Ruin No Longer a Ruin? | 372 |
Future Ruins | 375 |
Chance Ruins | 376 |
OnSite | 378 |
Walls | 379 |
SunBurst | 381 |
Sound and Light | 382 |
Ruin Music | 383 |
Language | 384 |
Fond Farewell | 440 |
Works Cited | 449 |
Chronology of Ruin | 453 |
Common Era CE | 454 |
Uncommon Error UE | 460 |
Appendix Bibliographical Essay on the Literature and Imagery of Ruin | 461 |
Art History | 465 |
Individual Artists | 469 |
Literary History | 470 |
History of Culture | 472 |
Archaeology | 473 |
Individual Ruins | 476 |
Travel Literature | 478 |
Imaginative Literature | 479 |
Guidebooks and Souvenir Books | 481 |
Art of Photography | 482 |
Architecture | 485 |
History of Gardens | 487 |
War Ruins | 488 |
RuinArt Creations | 489 |
Philosophy | 490 |
Miscellaneous | 492 |
About the Author | 493 |
Index | 495 |
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Common terms and phrases
Acropolis activity aesthetics of ruins ancient arch archaeological archaeology architecture art history artist artwork Axiology become broken Buber building Carnuntum Castle church cinema Classical Colosseum Confucius context Contra-Aquincum Copán creative culture dead Death decay destruction Dryburgh Abbey earth edge editor Edzná enjoy enter excerpt exist film fragments frame François-René de Chateaubriand function Greece Greek ground hand heart Heraclitus Hubert Robert human imagination incongruity intact Jews live lost Masada material matter mind missing modern Molière monument move museum nature orig original ourselves painting Philosophy photographs picture pieces pillars Pompeii pre-Socratics presence remains replicas restoration Roman Rome ruin's Ruining Eye Scotland sculpture sense shape soul space stairs stand statue step stone structure symbolic taste television temple theories of ruin theory things tion tower tree turn unity universe viewer visitor visual volume wall whole window Yaxhá
Popular passages
Page 358 - O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, That I am meek and gentle with these butchers; Thou art the ruins of the noblest man That ever lived in the tide of times.
Page 387 - In human life time is but a point, reality a flux, perception indistinct, the composition of the body subject to easy corruption, the soul a spinning top, fortune hard to make out, fame confused. To put it briefly: physical things are but a flowing stream, things of the soul dreams and vanity; life is but a struggle and the visit to a strange land, posthumous fame but a forgetting. What then can help us on our way? One thing only: philosophy. This consists in guarding our inner spirit inviolate and...
Page 317 - IF thou would'st view fair Melrose aright, Go visit it by the pale moon-light; For the gay beams of lightsome day Gild, but to flout, the ruins gray.
Page 398 - He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him; for he said, I am the Son of God.
Page 237 - Just as cells in their division form a phenomenon of another order, the organism or embryo, so, on the other side of the dialectical leap from the shot, there is montage. By what, then, is montage characterized and, consequently, its cell — the shot? By collision. By the conflict of two pieces in opposition to each other. By conflict. By collision.
Page 117 - Caesars; the temples of the old religion, fallen down and gone; is to see the ghost of old Rome, wicked, wonderful old city, haunting the very ground on which its people trod. It is the most impressive, the most stately, the most solemn, grand, majestic, mournful sight, conceivable.
Page 315 - ... Half in light, half in shadow, these slender, fantastic forms stand out sharp, and clear, and colourless ; each figure some eighteen or twenty feet in height. They could scarcely have looked more weird when the great roof was in its place and perpetual twilight reigned. But it is difficult to imagine the roof on, and the sky shut out.
Page 382 - ... positively above her head, and from under it, solemnly, smiled at the Princess as a signal of intention. So for an instant, full of her thought and of her act, she held the precious vessel, and then, with due note taken of the margin of the polished floor, bare, fine and hard in the embrasure of her window...
Page 415 - I came on a great house in the middle of the night, Its open lighted doorway and its windows all alight, And all my friends were there and made me welcome too; But I woke in an old ruin that the winds howled through; And when I pay attention I must out and walk Among the dogs and horses that understand my talk.