Artwork: The Parthenon, Athens, Charles Gleyre (Swiss (active in France), 1806–1874), 1834, Watercolor, Lent by the Trustee of the Lowell Institute, William A. Lowell, Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Perhaps there is nothing so romantic as the ruins of a mythical place when the scattered, crumbled fragments of humanity’s efforts are all that remains. At the end of the eighteenth century, Europe developed a fondness for looking back, an aching nostalgia for a time and place that was never theirs. And from this a movement had come, one called Romanticism that ruled the better part of the nineteenth century.
Also: Exhibit | Delacroix and the Rise of Modern Art
As the Industrial Revolution began to take off, artists of the period were drawn not to the future but to the past. The possibilities of progress paled in contrast to the legacies of history that had been shattered, shorn, and worn away by alternate periods of pillage and neglect that lasted centuries. In the face of the so-called rationality of the Age of Enlightenment, artists understood that the past was simply an indicator of what the future had in store.
Interior: Tintern Abbey, Roger Fenton (English, 1816–1869), 1860s, Photograph, albumen print, Charles Amos Cummings Fund, Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
And so it is they began to document what they saw in empires that had been laid to waste, be it through photograph, etching, engraving, or watercolor. This practice began back in the Renaissance, as the medieval minds of Europe dredged themselves out of the Middle Ages by looking back to earlier times. The withered bones of ancient Rome provided both inspiration for a new approach, as well as a cautionary tale of disaster that Western Civilization still hasn’t fully accepted.
As artists moved away from the strictures of the Church, they began to embrace the cities of ancient Greece, Egypt, and the Near East. Here, they reconnected to something they understood, something that captured their imagination as nothing else ever could. They called it “the sublime,” and they imbued it with the powers of God, allowing themselves to revel in the decadence of destruction.
Portico of Pandroseum, William James Stillman (American, 1828–1901), 1882, Photograph, carbon print, Charles Amos Cummings Fund, Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
In celebration, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, presents Ruined: When Cities Fall, on view now through July 17, 2016. The exhibition is presented in conjunction with Megacities Asia, which looks at the accelerated rise of Beijing, Shanghai, Delhi, Mumbai, and Seoul, perhaps something of a harbinger, although only time can tell.
Featuring about 40 works drawn from the MFA’s collection, Ruined includes works by artists as diverse as Giovanni Battista Piranesi (Italian, 1720–1778) to James Nachtwey (American, b/ 1948). The exhibition includes includes early photographs of Athens, as well as Egyptian temple, and 18th- and 19th-century century views of Palmyra, as well as works that capture destructive forces, such as the great fire of Boston, the empty buildings of Richmond after the Civil War, and the charred remains of Dresden after the firebombing of 1945.
The Ramesseum of El-Kurneh, Thebes-First View (Fallen Colossus of Rameses), Francis Frith (English, 1822–1898), 1857, Photograph, albumen print, Lucy Dalbiac Luard Fund, Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Taken as a whole, the work is as prescient now as it was hundreds of years ago, for the human condition is very much the same as it ever was. Ruined: When Cities Fall reminds us the temporal plane is a transitory one, but it does give us hope, for as the Romans knew: Ars longa, vita brevis (Art is long, life is short).
Miss Rosen is a New York-based writer, curator, and brand strategist. There is nothing she adores so much as photography and books. A small part of her wishes she had a proper library, like in the game of Clue. Then she could blaze and write soliloquies to her in and out of print loves.
