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A love of desolation and ruins

From the neo-gothic follies of 18th-century aristocrats to the blasted cityscapes of contemporary Detroit, ruins have long obsessed artists

by Evelyn Toynton / March 27, 2014 / Leave a comment
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Published in April 2014 issue of Prospect Magazine

Jane and Louise Wilson’s photograph of a ruined German gun emplacement in Normandy, 2006
©Jane and Louise Wilson


Once upon a time, gazing at ruins was considered one of life’s most exquisite pleasures. The parks designed by Capability Brown and William Kent for 18th-century aristocrats often featured a neo-gothic folly or crumbling mock-classical temple specially created to set off the surrounding landscape. Cultured travellers, meanwhile, went in search of real ruins in Britain and abroad, a trend that continued well into the 19th century. Ruined castles were a favourite destination, as were ruined abbeys set in beautiful landscapes: to satisfy the exacting requirements of the romantic sightseer, a ruin had to possess what John Constable called “melancholy grandeur.” Henry James, a connoisseur of decay in all its guises, mocked his own zealous ruin tourism as a “heartless pastime” entailing “a note of perversity.” Such perversity is nicely hinted at in the title Tate Britain has given its current exhibition of ruins in art: Ruin Lust (from the German Ruinenlust, although in German “lust” merely denotes joy or pleasure).

As the passion for ruins increased, so too did their appearance in the work of English artists. It was a time when the aesthetic doctrines of the Enlightenment—beauty as a matter of perfectly correct proportions, to be objectively appreciated by the rational mind—were being replaced, along with other Enlightenment doctrines, by a new philosophy of subjectivity. The emphasis on art’s strictly formal properties gave way to the cult of sensibility, an aesthetic more concerned with art’s power to evoke ideas and feelings and memories: associations, to borrow a term from David Hartley’s influential theories of how the mind worked.

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Comments

  1. Ramesh Raghuvanshi
    April 7, 2014 at 11:07
    Desolation and ruins are historical monuments.Most travelers visited them for love of nostalgia,are they give pleasure to visitors? Are they really beautiful ?Really speaking they are pitiable, In India most desolation and ruins are sing of defeat shame insult and injure the psyche of Hindus,. only give nausea to visitors.I had seen ruins of Rome and only nausea arises in my mind,what is beauty is there looking most dirty scatter ruins and desolation death body of previous generation?
  2. tom
    April 7, 2014 at 15:51
    made me think of Larkin's poem 'Church Going'
  3. Serge
    April 8, 2014 at 16:26
    The aestheticization of ruins is as decadent as its subject matter.
  4. Lizzie B.
    April 9, 2014 at 13:51
    Wonderful piece, as always by Evelyn Toynton, especially her thoughts about photos of Detroit and the impulse to "aestheticize catastrophe" - which is so much of what the artist/writer often does.
  5. Dr. Felix Saure
    April 13, 2014 at 20:43
    An article very much worth reading. May I add just one philological/linguistic detail: the term coined by Albert Speer is "Ruinenwert" ("Wert" = worth, value) not "Ruinenwort" ("Wort" = word). And Speer used the term only years after the end of WWII, not 1933-45.

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About this author

Evelyn Toynton
Evelyn Toynton is a writer and novelist. Her most recent book is “Jackson Pollock” (Yale)
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