Comments on: Makers of Ruins

Makers of Ruins

Iridic — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 09:57:10 -0800

Once upon a time, there was a wizard who knew what Heaven and Hell looked like.

On Joseph Michael Gandy (1771 – 1843), the architect's assistant who painted palaces that never were and ruins that had yet to be.

Gandy's architectural fantasies are properly called capricci. The capriccio genre was launched by Venetian landscape painters who grew tired of executing the same handful of views of the Grand Canal for tourists and began to make up new antique panoramas. The style attained profundity and terror in the etchings of Piranesi (previously) and an odd ruinous calm on the massive canvases of Hubert Robert.

By: chavenet

chavenet — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 10:06:52 -0800

Gandy's vision of the Bank of England in ruins Ahhh, wishful thinking.

By: BlackLeotardFront

BlackLeotardFront — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 10:10:10 -0800

Ah! My god! I was just learning about this guy Gandy the other day! His work is goddamn amazing. I scoured the net for hours trying to find a couple decent versions of his images. Even had to email a couple British university types who have things unavailable elsewhere. It's incredibly hard to find copies of his stuff, but I managed to piece together quite a few in good quality. I've uploaded them to a gallery here (56k warning).

By: jeffamaphone

jeffamaphone — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 10:10:20 -0800

I've always loved these sorts of things. One of my favorites is Canaletto's An Island in the Lagoon with a Gateway and a Church (link).

By: shothotbot

shothotbot — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 10:13:38 -0800

This is super cool. We had a little waterfall on our property and I always wanted to install some fake ruins there.

By: jeffamaphone

jeffamaphone — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 10:19:36 -0800

Oh they also have some Hubert Robert paintings: Fantastic View of Tivoli The Column The Obelisk The Ruin Source.

By: The 10th Regiment of Foot

The 10th Regiment of Foot — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 10:20:18 -0800

We had a little waterfall on our property and I always wanted to install some fake ruins there. Your name isn't Lyttelton by chance is it?

By: DU

DU — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 10:21:11 -0800

These aren't real pictures of fake ruins. They are fake pictures of ruins.

By: The 10th Regiment of Foot

The 10th Regiment of Foot — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 10:24:24 -0800

Well the pictures are real, the pictures are just of fake things or real things that aren't ruined yet.

By: yoink

yoink — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 10:26:05 -0800

They are fake pictures of ruins Capricci knockoffs? Sapristi knockos!

By: treepour

treepour — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 12:02:19 -0800

Thanks for this post! I love this sort of thing and didn't realize it has a name and historical tradition. Moreover, I think it's resolved a mysterious early-childhood memory. When I was very young, my parents took me some sort of film showing for kids at the public library. I was barely old enough to pay attention and follow-along, but the imagery from that film -- whatever it was -- has always haunted me. When I clicked on the Piranesi, I instantly recognized it as the imagery that's been in the back of my mind all these years. Why on earth a public library would be showing a film that had something to do with that etching to small children, I have no idea. But I even remember the spiky roller things on the lower-left and how much they creeped me out.

By: SageLeVoid

SageLeVoid — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 12:57:34 -0800

I was reading (and discovering) about Piranesi just yesterday in the second trade paperback of Morrison's Doom Patrol (The painting that ate paris), where Paris is eaten by a knock off of a mysterious Piranesi's painting.

By: Katjusa Roquette

Katjusa Roquette — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 15:49:34 -0800

But ... What will the archeologists think?

By: lucien_reeve

lucien_reeve — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 01:59:31 -0800

Thank you! I had never heard of Gandy. Wonderful stuff. And a very big thank you as well to BlackLeotardFront for what I believe the goons on SomethingAwful would call an "effortpost" - a really substantial contribution to the thread. What a great gallery. Incredibly evocative and strange and visionary.

By: jfuller

jfuller — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 13:27:13 -0800

It's absurdly pleasing that Gandy's view of the Bank of England in ruins is shown in the article on John Soane, who designed the bank building (fpp 'architect's assistant' link) and blandly referred to there as a "cutaway view."