Haunted and Haunting

In the last century, Ruskin was considered a scholar, the first Slade Professor of Art at Oxford; today, he is considered an arbitrary and whimsical purple-patcher. So fast did science invade the uncharted area that lies between man and the projection of man into matter called a painting. The boast of our age is to have increased that distance, opened it to Everyman, labeled its paths, directed the flow of traffic through it. Ours is the museum without walls.

The Darkening Glass: A Portrait of Ruskin’s Genius, by John D. Rosenberg. Columbia, $5.00