Pictures of Dorian Gray, Essay Example

Dorian Gray as Aesthetic Art

In the world of literature, stories often have more to tell than just the narration about events and characters development in them. In most of the cases, authors have their own message to readers and they use literary work as a means of expressing their intended message. In this regard, every literary work receives a new interpretation if it is analysed in the framework of author’s worldview and personal intentions. The novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde is not an exception. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how Oscar Wilde reflected his Aesthetic theory in the novel through the characters of Basil, Lord Henry and Dorian.

In general, Wilde’s perception of aesthetics was that art exist for the sake of art. The beauty of the art has no purpose or moral judgement. Thus, aesthetics cannot be categorised in terms socially acceptable norms and religious categories of right or wrong. The beauty of art is universal and cannot be categorised by any socially-constructed categories of evaluation. In the correlation of art which is artificial and nature, Wilde considered that the aesthetic beauty of art was superior to untamed and crude features of nature. Since nature and art were entire different categories of existence, they could possess similar means of evaluation. Consequently, the artificiality of art gave it the right to make lies the core of instead of imitating nature and the truth of reality.  This core perception of art with its diverse implications was reflected in three main characters of the novel.

Basil – the moral artist

The character of Basil serves a few functions in the expression of Wilde’s aesthetics. From one perspective, like any artist, he is driven only by his art and he has his muse – Dorian as an inspiration of his art. As Wilde’s ideal artist, Basil devotes his entire life to art for the sake of art, which is demonstrated in his attitude to the painting and admiration over the beauty of Dorian. On the other hand, Basil also embodies features that Wide considered to be irrelevant for the true aesthetic artist. The problem of Basil was his connection with reality and an attempt to reflect truth in art, while Wilde’s aesthetics argued that the art was meant to express only beauty and not try to relate with reality or serves as means of reflecting truth. In this regard, Basil’s attempt to unite the reality of truth with art resulted in the picture of Dorian serving as a reflection of his soul, which was not what the art was meant to do.

In his attempt to give the art morality and context, Basil served as an example of the way an artist should not be according to Wilde’s aesthetics. The ideal artists had to tell and express lies so far the art was aesthetically beautiful no matter what was behind it. In other words, basil had to depict Dorian’s beauty in that moment of time and leave it that way irrespective of moral or truthful considerations. Another lesson about Wilde’s aesthetics that Basil can teach is that an artist wears a mask and keeps his identity behind that mask. The art is a reflection of the artist’s identity and it can tell about his personality more than his face or verbal revelation.

In this regard, the picture of Dorian reflects Basil as much as Dorian but in a different way. The picture reflects his admiration of Dorian as a muse and the desire to capture reality. This desire of capturing reality for the sake of reality instead of art was the source of corruption of picture’s aesthetics and the integrity of its beauty. In this regard, Wilde demonstrated that for the art to preserve its aesthetic nature it should not be analysed in terms of realism and its consequent context, because, for Wilde, art is what it is outside the context of reality and purposefulness.

Basil is not an ideal artist in Wilde’s perception because he does not conduct life according to art aesthetics. The fact that in his life outside art Basil is driven by morality and socially-constructed judgements in terms of right and wrong, he could not perceive the universal beauty of the art and was limited by conventional thinking: “sin is a thing that writes itself across a man’s face; it cannot be concealed” (Wilde 115). For Wilde, the essence of aesthetic art is that an artist lives the life if that art that cannot be categorised in terms of sin, right and wrong of social morality.

Lord Henry – the right artist of Wilde’s aesthetics

Unlike Basil, Lord Henry corresponds to Wilde’s perception of an ideal artist. In this regard, Lord Henry demonstrates a personality that is not driven by social morality or fear of any sin. He reflects Wilde’s conviction that the individual creates times, and the times do not create the individual. In this regard, Lord Henry believes that searching for new the experiences in life one can get a better realisation of life and feel to its full extent irrespective of good/evil dichotomy. Thus, the evil side of one’s life is just another experience to try. In other words, Lord Henry expresses Wilde’s argument that evil and sin are the means of diversifying boring order of life. The act of misbehaviour creates a resonance of individualism and boosts creativity and unconventional thinking. In this regard, Lord Henry serves as an example of an ideal artist who lives his life according to his aesthetic art. This is demonstrated in his perception of a correlation between beauty and intellect: “But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face” (Wilde 2).

Although Lord Henry does not create the picture of Dorian, he is the creator of Dorian and Dorian is the reflection of his art of sin. In this regard, Lord Henry uses his knowledge and experience of a dandy in order to create an aesthetic reflection of himself: “to be good is to be in harmony with oneself; discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others” (Wilde 60). Unlike Basil, he lived through his art and aimed to depict its aesthetic beauty of creativity in a living creature Dorian Gray. On the other hand, although Lord Henry followed Wilde’s ideal perception of an artist and attitude to art in its aesthetic value, just as Basil, he was too connected with reality and the desire to reflect the perception of reality on the aesthetic beauty of Dorian. In other words, Wilde argued that aesthetical art is not about replication or improvement of reality, it is about stimulation of feelings and impressions – an aesthetic experience.

Dorian Gray – a masterpiece corrupted

The character of Dorian Gray describes Wilde’s fascination with the uniqueness of aesthetic experience from art and inability of its replication and realisation in terms of real and socially constructed norms of morality, goodness and evil. Although it can be argued that the author demonstrates that overreliance on uncategorised experiences and the lack of moral judgement corrupts one’s soul and distorts the art, in terms of Wilde aesthetics of the art outside the context and judgement, the message in the example of Dorian Gray is very much different and more complex. From the author’s perspective, Dorian is a demonstration of how the aesthetics of art can be distorted if it is placed in the human dimension and replaced by reality.

In other words, through the entire novel Wilde does not pay much of attention to moralisation and judgement of Dorian’s actions; what he really pays attention to his feelings and emotions. A particular feature is that Wilde reflects Dorian’s feelings not regarding his actions but their reflection on his picture. In this regard, Wilde suggests that Dorian as any observer of art receives its perception through feelings and impressions and not through rational thinking. This way of reacting to his inner changes also demonstrates that inside Dorian has little perception of what is right and wrong and socially conditioned approval of his actions: “he did not even glance at the murdered man; he felt that the secret of the whole thing was not to realize the situation. The friend who had painted the fatal portrait to which all his misery had been due had gone out of his life; that was enough” (Wilde 122). In fact, he is a universal, aesthetic piece of art that exists beyond categories. Although his picture was ageing and reflected all of his sins, his aesthetic beauty remained untouched and for the people around him, it mattered little because his was so beautiful and sensational that rationale think and evaluation was of no relevance.

On the other hand, the primary purpose of Dorian’s character in the reflection of Wilde’s aesthetics is that his case demonstrated how art should be created and evaluated only in terms of its own aesthetic framework. The attempts of Basil to link art with reality, Lord Henry’s desire to replicate himself in Dorian and Dorian’s fear of ageing and death distorted the very nature of art – its aesthetic purpose. By creating psycho-social links between art and reality, the art is given attributes of natural things, which, in Wilde’s interpretation, suggests that art is being deprived its initial superiority over nature. In other words, by giving real and natural attributes to art it loses its aesthetic beauty and distinctiveness from the real life and simple facts. Thus, the analysis of three characters and the novel in general suggest that in Wilde’s aesthetic perception human categorisation of good/evil and moral are not applicable to art and should not distort the aesthetic beauty of one impression from it.

Overall, from all mentioned above, it can be concluded that Wilde demonstrated his vision of aesthetics of art through three approaches of the three main characters: Basil, Lord Henry and Dorian. All three characters showed a human desire to relate art to reality in this way or another. From Wilde’s perspective, this attempt resulted in the distortion of the very nature of art – to bring aesthetic impression from beauty irrespective of the moral context. Thus, the beauty of the art should remain for its impressionist effect.

Work Cited

Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. London: Wordsworth Editions. 1992. Print.