Design for an Arch n.d.

Curator: Here we have John Ruskin's "Design for an Arch," created with watercolor, graphite, ink, and pencil on paper. Editor: It’s wonderfully dreamlike, like something you’d sketch after waking from a fitful sleep in a medieval cathedral. There's an incompleteness, a haziness… Did Ruskin actually intend for this to be built? Curator: It’s difficult to say for sure. Ruskin was deeply interested in the revival of Gothic architecture, so this may have been a proposal for a specific structure. He was captivated by the aesthetic and the supposed moral purity of medieval craftsmanship. Editor: So it’s less a literal design and more an idealized fragment of a bygone era? A ghostly suggestion of faith made manifest in stone? Curator: Precisely. Ruskin championed the craftsman and their integral role within society, advocating a return to handcraftsmanship over industrial production which, in his view, stripped labor of its integrity. Editor: There’s a definite Romantic yearning in the sketch – a sort of yearning for something authentic in a world increasingly shaped by iron and industry. I feel the absence, rather than presence, when looking at this design. It whispers, "Remember the hands that built beauty.” Curator: Absolutely. The academic influence and the attention to the details of Italian Renaissance architecture further place it within this longing for an ideal past. You can see a desire to integrate the virtues of these bygone eras within the design of modern structures and within modern society at large. Editor: And while the figures feel stylized, like a memory rather than a direct rendering, I appreciate how those washes of pale pink give an echo of life, a sense of flesh beneath the robes. The sketch is an impression, an architectural apparition. Curator: I see it too; these soft colors seem intentional. And these elements serve to enhance its sense of temporality as the viewer can glimpse how Ruskin used watercolor in the initial processes for creation of art pieces. Editor: So we are left contemplating the possibilities inherent in design. An echo chamber of beauty? Food for thought. Curator: Indeed. An evocative reflection on how architectural principles impact, reflect, and can perhaps redirect society.