{"id":1282,"date":"2023-11-02T21:43:04","date_gmt":"2023-11-03T01:43:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/?p=1282"},"modified":"2023-11-02T21:43:04","modified_gmt":"2023-11-03T01:43:04","slug":"what-is-art-what-does-art-mean-what-does-wilde-mean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/2023\/11\/02\/what-is-art-what-does-art-mean-what-does-wilde-mean\/","title":{"rendered":"What is art?! What does art mean?! What does Wilde mean?!"},"content":{"rendered":"

My original title was \u201cArt is alive because art reflects life,\u201d but I\u2019ve seemed to go down a rabbit hole and bounce around ideas, so let\u2019s just go with it!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Casting the fantastical aside, the portrait exhumes Dorian Gray\u2019s evilness and dooms Gray to be beautiful forever. Wilde writes of another piece of art, \u201cwho must wear purple and jewels and fine linen that she may hide the pallid macerated body that is worn by the suffering that she seeks for, and wounded by self-inflicted pain.\u201d (128) Gray is describing his art collections, and he names this particular piece \u201cThe Bride of Christ,\u201d followed by the previous description that seems to reflect himself. He describes \u201cThe Bride of Christ\u201d as a woman who must hide her small, sickly body with beautiful, expensive dress. As mentioned in class, people in the Victorian Era believed that evilness presents physically on the body. Wilde addresses this concept by bringing up the image of \u201cThe Bride of Christ,\u201d but ultimately pushes against this ideal through Gray\u2019s beautiful exterior yet immoral, murdering interior. Gray is similar to the woman in that he is hiding something ugly with a beautiful exterior, but unlike the woman he is privileged with natural beauty and does not have to disguise himself in expensive dress, because gray has help from the portrait. The more corrupt and evil Gray becomes, the uglier the painting becomes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Gray is not the only person reflected in the painting. The artist himself, Basil, is also reflected in the deteriorating painting, symbolizing both muse and artist’s soul. Unlike Gray, Basil tries to redeem his soul. Although, when he seeks Gray for redemption, he is murdered as a result. Similarly, <\/span>The Portrait of Dorian Gray<\/span><\/i> is a work of art that ultimately causes his demise and lands him in jail. Gray is inspired by a real person, reflecting Wilde\u2019s personal life as well as his own beauty standards as Gray is especially beautiful. Therefore, Wilde is the artist and, again, Gray is the muse. Gray is a manifestation of Wilde\u2019s art. Through the overly complicated and contradictory <\/span>The Portrait of Dorian Gray<\/span><\/i>, Wilde asks the reader to consider \u201cWhat does art contribute to society? Does art reflect life or teach lessons? Can art do both?\u201d Even though Wilde claims \u201cAll art is quite useless\u201d in the preface, the rest of the book proves his point wrong through the image of both human and portrait of Gray. Wilde is saying art derives from something; art comes from the soul, therefore art reflects life.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My original title was \u201cArt is alive because art reflects life,\u201d but I\u2019ve seemed to go down a rabbit hole and bounce around ideas, so let\u2019s just go with it!\u00a0 Casting the fantastical aside, the portrait exhumes Dorian Gray\u2019s evilness and dooms Gray to be beautiful forever. Wilde writes of another piece of art, \u201cwho … Continue reading What is art?! What does art mean?! What does Wilde mean?!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5240,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125361],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2023-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5240"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1282\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}