Tim Hilton's John Ruskin: The Later Years (Yale University Press) together with The Early Years (1985) appears to me the model biography of a cultural figure.Tim Hilton's John Ruskin: The Later Years (Yale University Press) together with The Early Years (1985) appears to me the model biography of a cultural figure. The volume is fluid for all its extent judicious about a notoriously fractious enthrall and unpretentiously literate throughout. Hilton rehearses the events of Ruskin's life straight between the sides of in one- and two-year increments, digressing when necessary and referencing forward and backward when appropriate. Far from a entire recounting, however, the book is suffused with Hilton's intimate knowledge of Ruskin's enormous production, in such a manner at every point the narrative is telling us something we ne to know--about the life to appreciate the work, about the work to appreciate the life, or about the tillage to appreciate them both. Taken together, Hilton's sum of two units volumes constitute an amazingly organic achievement, a triumphant telling of single of saddest stories ever told. Dave Hickey, an art critic who lives in Las Vegas, is popularly organizing SITE Santa Fe's Fourth International Biennial, "Beau Monde: Toward a freeed Cosmopolitanism," which opens its July 2001 COPYRIGHT 2000 Artforum International Magazine, Inc. |
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