Ruins as a mental construct

• Autores: Michel Baridon
• Localización: Studies in the history of gardens and designed landscape, ISSN 1460-1176, Vol. 5, Nº 1, 1985, págs. 84-96
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The creative imagination of the eighteenth century seems to have attributed a greatpower ofstimulation to ruins. They were sung by Gray, described by Gibbon, painted by Wilson, Lambert, Turner, Girtin and scores of others; they adorned the sweeps and the concave slopes ofgardens designed by Kent and Brown; they inspired hermits; they fired the zeal of antiquarians; they graced the pages of hundreds of sketchbooks and provided a suitable background to the portraits of many virtuosi. They were in demand everywhere; they were thought so indispensable that substitutes (sometimes even cardboard) were erected in the parks which proved destitute of authentic "relics of the past". Ruins were indeed an essential element of the landscape of sensibility; they gave it an element of nostalgia which was part ofits essence; their popularity was so universally acknowledged that the task which confronts the critic is to explain why emblems ofdecay were identified with the modernity ofan age whose pride was in innovation. It has also to explain the vogue ofa taste which was inseparably linked with the English garden and whose influence was felt in most countries of Europe and in America.