lecture notes

1. «To live is the rarest thing in the world.
Most people exist, that is all»
Oscar Wilde in a photo by Napoleon Sarony

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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”

5. IMPORTANT Works

7. Aestheticism
ARTISTIC MOVEMENT
Context – Space: Europe
Specificity:
Aestheticism in England;
Symbolism or Decadence: France;
Decadentismo: Italy
Time: the end of XIX century
FOCUS : 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

8. The
Preface
““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
movement
Joseph 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 – contemporarycontemporary
•(?) 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 street
Christo  «Project ART : Christo Yavachev & Jeanne-Claude (LAND ART) 
WALKING ON GOLDEN WATER
REALITYREALITY  Las Muñecas

9. Communicating Sensations

10. 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