Like many of the other students, upon looking at the prompt for this discussion I felt bewildered as to how I would respond. For me too, the Gothic style has represented the gloom and grimness associated with the Victorian Age, home to the likes of Frankenstein and Dracula. Despite this fact, the richness of Gothicism has always attracted me. Its variety of spires, peaks, arches, and gargoyles seem to surprise the eye with every glance. Upon reading the selection from Ruskin’s Stones of Venice, as well as Professor Bump’s selection from Manual Photography, I feel I have a much stronger grasp on why this style has seemed so visually appealing for me, and how its surprising array of features draw from elements of nature.
When observing these buildings a
feeling of chaos seems to draw my attention, things seem to be arranged in a
manner that is somewhat illogical or random, various points or spires placed
merely for extreme ornamental value. This display of great variety in features
gives the building a feeling of savagery, the most necessary characteristic of
Gothicism as defined by Ruskin (Bump 539). This rudeness, this seemingly rough
juxtaposition of various architectural elements, draws from the ideal that the
building style, like nature, is traced without constraint, without limiting
boundaries as to how much or what should be placed in certain areas and with
certain intents. Like Rachel described, this characteristic is prominent in the
North, where it is a “desirable character” to express this “wildness of
thought, and roughness of work; this look of mountain brotherhood between the
cathedral and the Alp; this magnificence of sturdy power” (Bump 543). There is
a “perpetual variety of every feature of the building” (Bump 543), just as
Nature displays a dazzling yet seeming random assortment of beauty for us to
behold. This variety of bold elements allows each Gothic building to seem at
home in its natural environment. In comparing the Gothic architecture of