Abstract
THE attention which has been given in recent months to industrial design and the relations between art and industry has an important bearing on other profound problems of the machine age. In spite of their efforts to foster healthier relations between creative design and craftsmanship, Ruskin and his school must take a large share of responsibility for the belief that a machine could not produce a thing of beauty. While explaining that the wisdom of art consists in its unselfish devotion to the service of man, while insisting on the necessity for providing elements of beauty in the surroundings of the workman, and that art does its duty “in completing the comforts and refining the pleasures of daily occurrence and familiar service”, Ruskin brought a somewhat rigid conservatism to bear on the use of new materials in art, particularly the use of metals.
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Art in Modern Industry. Nature 135, 849–851 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/135849a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/135849a0