In Ruins
by Christopher Woodward
List Price:
Our Price: $5.99
You Save: $18.01 (75%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $1.25 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Christopher WoodwardEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-10-08
ISBN: 0375421998
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: Pantheon
Book Reviews of In Ruins
Book Review: A Walk Though Paradise Garden
Summary: 5 Stars
IN RUINS by Christopher Woodward is one of the most genteel, warmly evocative, yet scholarly extended essays about beauty that has appeared in a while. Only a true artist could 1) come up with the idea of meditating on ruins of past civilizations and 2) recreate historical places not only through his own perceptive eyes but also through the eyes and writings and drawings and paintings of artists for the past two hundred years. Woodward finds beauty in the "neglected" ruins, the old sites where nature has nudged the surfaces with wild flowers, mosses, crawling vines, and ground swells, preferring this respect for times past to the wild flurry of the preservationists who seek to 'restore' these treasures to their 'original glory' but often invite tourism with its adjunctive sales, stands, and souvenirs. He has visited the ruins of Rome, of Sicily, Cuba, England, etc and is distraught when he finds these various havens for poets sequestered with guardrails and other implements of distraction. "..the artist is inevitably at odds with the archeologist. In the latter discipline the scattered fragments of stone are parts of a jigsaw, or clues to a puzzle to which there is only one answer, as in a science laboratory; to the artist, by contrast, any answer which is imaginative is correct." "What [poet] Shelley's experience shows is that the vegetation which grows on ruins appeals to the depths of our consciousness, for it represents the hand of Time, and the contest between the individual and the universe." Of the 'Picturesque Movement' in England, Woodward writes referring to the latter day artist John Piper "I know perfectly well I would rather paint a ruined abbey half-covered with ivy and standing in long grass than I would paint it after if has been taken over by the Office of Works, when they've taken of all the ivy and mown all the grass." Woodward talks about even the transporting of ruins from, say, Libya to England (as per King George IV in 1827 importing the Roman ruins of Leptis Magna to his Gardens at Virginia Water). "A ruin is a dialogue between an incomplete reality and the imagination of the spectator." And finally in his thoughts on war monuments and memorials he writes "Is it ever possible to preserve the 'strange beauty' of war, to capture the moment of 'dust in the air suspended'?"Each of these eloquently written thoughts and musings is unlike anything else you will find in books on art history, architectural history, or even philosophy. Christopher Woodward has graced our libraries with a little volume that holds dear the intangible, the corporeal transience, the lasting loveliness of man's time on this planet as protected by nature. This is truly a beautiful book that begs for moments of your indulgence, away from the madding crowd.
Summary of In Ruins
In this enchanting meditation on ruins, Christopher Woodward takes us on a thousand-year journey from the plains of Troy to the monuments of ancient Rome, from the crumbling palaces of Sicily, Cuba, and Zanzibar to the rubble of the London Blitz. With an exquisite sense of romantic melancholy, we encounter the teenage Byron in the moldering Newstead Abbey, Flaubert watching the buzzards on the pyramids, Henry James in the Colosseum, and Freud at Pompeii. We travel the Appian Way with Dickens and behold the Baths of Caracalla with Shelley. An exhilarating tour, at once elegant and stimulating, In Ruins casts an exalting spell as it explores the bewitching power of architectural remains and their persistent hold on the imagination.Architecture Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Architecture Books
Collins DIY Guide: Weatherproofing & Insulation (Collins DIY Guides)by Albert Jackson, David Day
HarperCollins Publishers; Published: 1995-01-31; Paperback; Book
The House & Garden Book of Romantic Roomsby Robert Harling, Leonie Highton, John Bridges
HarperCollins Publishers; Published: 1985-09-30; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $85.00
The Millennium Dome: The Official Book of the Domeby SIMON JENKINS (FOREWORD) ELIZABETH WILHIDE
HARPERCOLLINS ILLUSTRATED; Published: 1999; Hardcover; Book
Handbook of Oriental Studies. Part 7 Art and Archaeologyby C. H. M. Versteegh, R. S. O'Fahey, B. Walraven
Brill Academic Publishers; Hardcover; Book
Building Codes Illustrated: A Guide to Understanding the International Building Codeby Francis D. K. Ching, Steven R. Winkel, Steven Winkel, AIA
Wiley; Published: 2003-03-14; Paperback; Book
Best price: $21.90
Price in other shops:
Heating, Cooling, Lighting: Sustainable Design Methods for Architectsby Norbert Lechner
Wiley; Published: 2008-11-24; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $76.86
Price in other shops:
Object to Be Destroyed: The Work of Gordon Matta-Clarkby Pamela M. Lee
The MIT Press; Published: 2001-10-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $17.72
Price in other shops:
One Place after Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identityby Miwon Kwon
The MIT Press; Published: 2002-06-21; Hardcover; Book
Price in other shops:
History of Artby H. W. Janson, Anthony F. Janson
Prentice Hall and Harry Abrams; Published: 1995; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $62.00
Price in other shops:
The Secret Architecture of Our Nation's Capital: The Masons and the Building of Washington, D.C.by David Ovason
Harper Perennial; Published: 2002-03-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.96
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
Ruins of Modernity (Politics, History, and Culture)Duke University Press Books; Published: 2010-03-19; Paperback; Book
Best price: $19.72
Price in other shops: