«To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all»

Oscar Wilde in a photo by Napoleon Sarony

Oscar Wilde

Performer - Culture&Literature

Oscar Wilde adopted the aesthetic ideal: pursue aesthetic value, or incorporate it into our lives ‘my life IS a work of art’.His AESTHETICISM clashed with the didacticism of Victorian CULTURE – In prose espec.(novels).

Wilde’s AESTHETICISM

• The artist  

• Art

• Virtue and vice

the creator of beautiful things

used only to celebrate beauty and the sensorial pleasures

employed by the artist as raw material in his art:‘No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style’

‘The Preface’ to The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde

Performer - Culture&Literature

• reflects Oscar Wilde’s CONVICTIONS

REGARDING LIFE

• ‘Art is the most intense form of individualism that the world has known’

• considered immoral by Victorian public

1890 first appeared in a magazine.1891 revised and extended

n.b. There is so much more to be said about the novel itself and the intricate workings of human behaviour and the duality of the human mind

Id, ego, superego (FREUD)

The Picture of Dorian Grey

Widle Style Of WRITING and LIVING Oscar Wilde’s expressive “voice” is as important as

it is rich in variety and content. DEVICE : tone, diction, imagery, irony, allusion,

symbolism, metaphor, personification, etc. are always a part of his writings.

Known for clever, ironic quotes Mocked Victorian notions about the “essential”

seriousness of significant art Art was the “supreme reality” and life was “fiction”

IMPORTANT Works

AestheticismARTISTIC MOVEMENTContext – Space: Europe Specificity: Aestheticism in England; Symbolism or Decadence: France; Decadentismo: Italy

Time: the end of XIX centuryFOCUS : emphasis on aesthetic values (Beauty), cult of sensations.

“Art for art’s sake”Art should not teach or be useful

BUT Communicate BEAUTY and SENSATIONS

The Pre fa c e

““The artist is the creator of beautiful things"The artist is the creator of beautiful things"

““To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim”To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim”

““The highest, as the lowest, form of criticism is a mode of autobiography”The highest, as the lowest, form of criticism is a mode of autobiography”

““All art is at once surface and symbol”All art is at once surface and symbol”

““Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril”Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril”

““All art is quite uselessAll art is quite useless” ”

Fakir Musafar – Fakir Musafar – father of the modern primitive movementJoseph Beuys – 1965 Installation art genre of three-dimensional works site-specific and

designed to transform the perception of a space Beuys - painted himself in gold, strapped a ski to one foot, and sat in an exhibition space explaining pictures to a dead rabbit he held in his arms How to Explain Pictures to a Dead HareHow to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare

ORLAN – ORLAN – contemporary contemporary •(?) aim to change the idea of beauty (media)“I am not sure I can change such a thing, but I can produce images that are different from those we find in comics, video games, magazines and TV shows”– the objectified woman

•Controversial critics have described Orlan as mad, some have written up her interest in

cosmetic surgery as anti-feminist;

UMBO – photography Robert Capa, et al. Mysteries of the streetMysteries of the streetChristo «Project ART : Christo Yavachev & Jeanne-Claude (LAND ART)

WALKING ON GOLDEN WATER

REALITY REALITY Las Muñecas

Communicating Sensations

Wilde’s Literary Focus«Preface» is a Manifesto of Aestheticism. Art appeals to the senses of the reader

Life should be a RE-PRESENTATION of Art ART Shows different attitudes to life - substantial

and critical comment is a (peril) reflection of OUR attitude to life – «mea culpa», «psychoanalysis», etc.

The MIRROR from which CALIBAN does not see wonderful things but sees himself