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Wednesday 15 February 2012

All art is quite useless - Oscar Wilde?






"I can resist anything, except temptation." 
Posso resistere a tutto tranne che alle tentazioni.



     -Before Oscar Wilde wrote,"All art is quite useless." 
there was some other writing. 
What does he mean by the other part of the preface?

       -The point he was trying to make is that art, on its own, has no value. Art has value because we give it value, and we give it value because of what it does to us. Art is a reflection of the artist, which is why the artist creates the art, but we like looking at it because what we see in it is something that reflects ourselves in some way. He was saying that different forms of art aren't necessarily "moral" or "immoral" ("Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming", "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written"), which ties into his statement that art is useful because we give it use. If you look at something and find ugliness, and art is a reflection of yourself, it means you are corrupt in some way, whereas someone who can look at something and find the good in it, even if it's ugly, it means that person has good in them (since art is a mirror of the spectator).

 Basically, the other part of the preface is meant to show why and how art is useless but how and why we give it value.
                                                                                                                                                                    Source(s): The Picture of Dorian Gray



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