The Artist's Studio

The Artist's Studio is a place of seduction and transformative power in Oscar Wilde's work. The Picture of Dorian Gray opens in a studio: here Dorian is first seduced¹ by Lord Henry Wotton's decadent²（颓废的） pronouncements and here the picture that leads Dorian to ruin is created. The dual³ images of creation and decay represented by the studio draw Wilde's reader into the very public battle waging over Aestheticism, the movement that adopted Wilde as its most prominent emblem⁵（象征，符号） and most notorious sinner.

 

The Aesthetic⁴ Movement encompassed⁶ the visual arts, the decorative⁷ arts, and literature. At Oxford⁸, Wilde studied under the two great art critics of the Victorian age, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. Pater's injunction "to know one's impression as it really is" underlies⁹ Aestheticism's guiding principle: the sole function of art is to inspire an emotion or create a mood. Pater's influence on Wilde's art criticism is strong; "All art is quite useless," Wilde asserts in the Preface to Dorian Gray. The Aesthetic Movement sought an art that exists for beauty alone. Arguments raged for and against the amorality of art, with every major thinker and artist of the day jumping into the fray¹⁰. The highly publicized court battle between James McNeill Whistler and John Ruskin over Whistler's aesthetic art set an early precedent¹¹ in the battle over the function of art in society. Later, for a time, Whistler and Wilde were interchangeable figures to the public. They battled in the newspapers and lecture halls for prominence¹², and Wilde won. He became the most visible symbol of Aestheticism in the 1880s; he would become the scapegoat¹³（替罪羊） for its excesses, both real and imagined, in the 1890s.

 

Wilde's own insistence¹⁴ on the amorality（超道德） of art was not uncomplicated, however, as shown in The Picture of Dorian Gray. The studio represents both the perils¹⁵ and promises of the Aesthetic Movement: artistic¹⁶ and sexual freedom from moral concerns--a space for homosexuality and decadence¹⁷. So long as these freedoms remained buried in the subtext or locked in the studio, the outside world could enjoy the risque titillation¹⁸ of forbidden life. But when the doors to the studio where flung open in the press and in the courts, Wilde's life and art were shattered.

分享到：