The Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray

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The Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray

• and Aestheticism

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Aestheticism

• Aestheticism ?artistic movement
• Context
• Space Europe
• Specificity Aestheticism England Symbolism
  or Decadence France Decadentismo Italy
• Time the end of XIX century
• Core emphasis of aesthetic values (Beauty), cult
  of sensations.
• Art for arts sake
• Art should not teach or be useful
• BUT
• communicate beauty and sensations
• ?
• S. Kierkegaard

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The Preface

• The artist is the creator of beautiful things"
• To reveal art and conceal the artist is arts
  aim
• The highest, as the lowest, form of criticism is
  a mode of autobiography
• All art is at once surface and symbol
• Those who go beneath the surface do so at their
  peril
• All art is quite useless

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The Picture of Dorian Gray

• Writer Oscar Wilde
• Genre Bildungsroman
• 1890
• Dorian Gray fascinating young man, model-like
  character.
• Lord Henry Wotton painter, teaches Dorian Gray
  Walter Paters philosophy?He starts living with
  the only purpose of reaching pleasures
• AIM
• Reaching eternal youth
• Picture showing the protagonists aging.
• Ending consciousness of his acts scars his
  picture.

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O. Wildes Literary Aim

• Manifesto of Aestheticism.
• Art should appeal to the senses of the reader.
• O. Wilde shows his point of view about Art.
• Life should be a RE-PRESENTATION of Art.
• Showing different attitudes about life as a
  concrete comment to the Victorian attitude to
  life