Oscar Wilde's aesthetic theory and its implementation. Life imitates art, not the art of life
Quote from The Decay of Lying (1889) English writer(1854 - 1900). Words from VIVIAN:
"As paradoxical as it may be, and paradoxes are always dangerous, it is nevertheless true that life imitates art more than art imitates life. Modern England had the opportunity to see firsthand how a certain strange and bewitching type of beauty, invented and promoted by two artists with a vivid imagination 1, had such an influence on Life that wherever you went - to a private exhibition or art salon- everywhere you come across those mysterious eyes of a Rosetti dream, a high chiseled neck, a strange angular jaw, loose, shading hair that he so passionately loved, charming femininity in the “Golden Staircase”, flowering lips and tired prettiness in “Laus Amoris”, a passionately pale face Andromeda, thin hands and flexible beauty of Vivien in "Merlin's Dream". And it has always been like this. great artist creates a type, and Life tries to copy it and reproduce it in a popular form, like an enterprising publisher. Neither Holbein nor Vandyck found what they gave us in England. They themselves produced their own types, and Life, with its pronounced penchant for imitation, undertook to provide the master with nature. The Greeks, with their artistic flair, understood this well and therefore placed a statue of Hermes or Apollo in the bride’s bedchamber so that her children would come out as charming as those works of art that she looked at in passion or anguish. They knew that Life takes from art not only spirituality, depth of thought or feeling, spiritual storms and peace of mind, but that it can also follow its color and form, reproducing the dignity of Phidias and the grace of Praxiteles. This is where their hostility to realism arose. They didn’t like it for purely social reasons. They had the feeling that realism was making people ugly, and they were absolutely right. We strive to improve the living conditions of the nation by clean air, sunlight, high-quality water and disgusting-looking boxes as improved housing for the lower classes. All this improves health, but does not create beauty. It requires Art, and the true followers of the great artist are not formal imitators, but those who themselves become the same as his works - plastically, as in the times of the Greeks, or portrait, as in our days; in short, Life is the best and only student of Art."
Quote "Life imitates art far more than art imitates life" in English - "Life imitates art far more than Art imitates life."
The above excerpt from The Decay of Lying, 1889 in English:
"Paradox though it may seem - and paradoxes are always dangerous things - it is none the less true that Life imitates art far more than Art imitates life. We have all seen in our own day in England how a certain curious and fascinating type of beauty, invented and emphasized by two imaginative painters, has so influenced Life that whenever one goes to a private view or to an artistic salon one sees, here the mystic eyes of Rossetti's dream, the long ivory throat, the strange square-cut jaw, the loosened shadowy hair that he so ardently loved, there the sweet maidenhood of "The Golden Stair," the blossom-like mouth and weary loveliness of the "Laus Amoris," the passion-pale face of Andromeda, the thin hands and lite beauty of the Vivian in "Merlin's Dream." And it has always been so. A great artist invents a type, and Life tries to copy it, to reproduce it in a popular form, like an enterprising publisher. Neither Holbein nor Vandyck found in England what they have given us. They brought their types with them, and Life with her keen imitation faculty set herself to supply the master with models. The Greeks, with their quick artistic instinct, understood this, and set in the bride"s chamber the statue of Hermes or of Apollo, that she might bear children as lovely as the works of art that she looked at in her rapture or her pain . They knew that Life gains from art not merely spirituality, depth of thought and feeling, soul-turmoil or soul-peace, but that she can form herself on the very lines and colors of art, and can reproduce the dignity of Pheidias as well as the grace of Praxiteles. Hence their objection to realism. They felt that it inevitably makes people ugly, and they were perfectly right. , free sunlight, wholesome water, and hidden bare buildings for the better housing of the lower orders. But these things merely produce health, they do not produce beauty. For this, Art is required, and the true disciples of the great artist are not his studio-imitators, but those who become like his works of art, be they plastic as in Greek days, or pictorial as in modern times; in a word, Life is Art"s best, Art"s only pupil."
In aesthetics, perhaps, nothing has been discussed as much as imitation in art. Already in antiquity, it was believed that the basis of art as a unique human activity is mimesis - imitation of something external, lying outside of art itself. However, imitation itself has been interpreted in different ways. The Pythagoreans believed that music was an imitation of the "harmony of the heavenly spheres." Democritus argued that art as a productive human activity comes from man’s imitation of animals: weaving imitates a spider, house-building imitates a swallow, singing imitates birds, etc.
The developed theory of mimesis begins with Plato; it finds its classic in Aristotle. And up to today The theory of imitation can be found in the most different interpretations, although now rarely anyone calls her by name.
According to Plato, imitation is the basis of all creativity. Poetry imitates truth and goodness, but usually the arts are limited to imitation of objects or phenomena of the surrounding world, and this is their limitation and imperfection: the objects themselves visible world are, according to Plato, only weak “shadows” (or imitations) of more high world ideas. Craftsmen and all categories business people They deal with objects of the second order: they create beds, chairs, ships and clothes, wage wars, and are in charge of politics. Poets and artists create only examples of those things that belong to the second stage. The number of samples that can be created by them is infinite, and there is no firm connection between the samples. For each thing there is only one idea. The artist is free and can draw pictures from any angle or present the matter in any form. This worries Plato. People in ordinary professions are imitators, but artists are imitators who imitate other imitators. One of the consequences of imitation in the activities of artists is their inconstancy. Plato likens the artist to a mirror: by rotating the mirror, you will immediately create the sun, and what is in the sky, and the earth, and yourself, and other animals, and plants, and utensils. It’s ridiculous to even call a reflective artist a master. The rotating mirror, capable of reflecting countless objects, illustrates the meaninglessness and irrationality of poetry and painting. Plato distinguishes two types of painting: firstly, drawings that are successful imitations of the originals and corresponding to them in length, width, depth and color, and, secondly, numerous works of painting that depict the originals from the artist’s point of view and therefore distort their inherent features . Fantastic images that do not resemble the originals (phantoms) deviate from the truth and should be rejected. The correctness of imitation lies in reproducing the qualities and proportions of the original, and the similarity between the original and the copy must be not only qualitative, but also quantitative.
The formulation of the theory of imitation given by Plato is thus extremely rigid. It is not surprising that from the point of view of such ideas about imitation, artists turn out to be inferior members of society, which in a perfect society should be gotten rid of.
Aristotle gives a fundamentally different interpretation of the theory of imitation. The world- this is not stability and not constant repetition of the same thing, as Plato believed, but formation, i.e. development, reproduction and disappearance of things according to a certain law. Art is also a process of creation and formation of objects, a movement caused in a particular environment by the soul and hand of the artist. Nature and art, says Aristotle, are the two main driving forces peace. Art, which is the work of man, is like divine creation, and it competes with natural processes. Refusing to interpret the world as being and emphasizing the importance of art in a world of constant becoming, Aristotle includes in the concept of mimesis not only the requirement for an adequate reflection of reality, but also the activity of creative imagination and even the idealization of reality. “Display of reality” is the depiction of things as “they were or are”; imagination - the image of things “as they are thought and spoken about”; idealization - depicting things as they should be. The purpose of mimesis is not only to excite a feeling of pleasure from reproduction, contemplation and cognition of an object, but also to acquire knowledge about the world and man.
Aristotle calls music the most imitative of all arts. "Why do rhythms and melodies, which are, after all, only sound, resemble emotional state human, but taste sensations, colors and smells are not? Is it because they, like actions, are dynamic?" According to Aristotle, the similarity of music with a person’s mental state is more immediate than the similarity of a painting or a statue: the latter are motionless, they have no energy or movement. The transmission of mental experiences by music does not have at the same time with such a deep general meaning as the reproduction in a tragedy of a comprehensive and serious action. Even though the music is easier to perceive, the tragedy depicts the fate of an entire group of people.
In the case of cognition, the next stage after memorization is “learning from experience.” Although experience is less perfect than science in terms of the volume of knowledge it contains, it sometimes surpasses higher knowledge in the direct benefits it brings. scientific view knowledge. The aesthetic parallel to this experiential capacity of the soul is, obviously, the quick response of the soul to the corresponding emotionality of music. The music listener does not need a logical conclusion; the character of the melody is grasped immediately.
In the Poetics, Aristotle says that such aesthetic phenomena as admiration for music and admiration for a life-like portrait correspond to the same level of knowledge or experience. “The reason for this [admiration, pleasure] is that acquiring knowledge is very pleasant... They look at images with pleasure, because by looking at them they can learn and reason...”
However, imitation in a portrait is not as lively as imitation in a melody. Therefore, although the pleasure afforded by the identification of similarities is perhaps equally acute, it is certainly achieved in a less direct way. When understanding the meaning of a picture, we do not respond intuitively to the stimulus that arises, but draw a definite conclusion and experience something like the delight of a scientist when something flashes in his head. new idea. The joy of knowledge occurs when every stroke and shade of paint in a painting achieves such similarity to the original that we recognize not only the type of object depicted (say, a person), but also a specific representative of this kind (such and such a person).
The following remark of Aristotle can be perceived as a requirement for imitation, which could be presented even to non-objective (abstract) painting: “If someone, without any plan, used the best colors in his work, he would not make such a pleasant impression on us as someone who simply painted an image ".
So, one of the reasons for the emergence of art, and in particular poetry, according to Aristotle, is man’s tendency to imitate. The second reason is stated very unclearly, which has given rise to many comments and interpretations. It is usually said that the first reason is man's instinct for imitation and his love of harmony, and the second is the pleasure which man usually experiences in discovering a resemblance. Aristotle does note the fact that people like elaborate replicas of things like the dead body of a man or a fish and a toad, which in real form are unpleasant. And yet, it can be assumed that the second reason for the emergence of art, unclearly interpreted by Aristotle, is not directly related to passive imitation. What does it mean
Aristotle, is, rather, the usefulness and necessity of the participation of art in the process of transforming the world by man and arranging his life. The Aristotelian principle “art imitates nature” does not mean that art copies nature. What Aristotle means is that art does what nature does—it creates forms.
Looking back at the history of aesthetics, we can say that Aristotle was the first to express, albeit not in a particularly clear form, the idea of the active functions of art. In essence, he anticipated the idea of the need to introduce, along with the category of imitation new category, covering these functions, are categories of motivation. Aristotle himself saw, however, in motivation not the task of art, the opposite of imitation, but only one of the constituent moments of imitation.
In modern times, the dual - and inherently internally inconsistent - interpretation of imitation, dating back to Aristotle, became common in aesthetics. Naturalism, which called for copying the external forms of objects and life situations, and realism, which insisted on displaying reality in special, namely typical, images, and even romanticism, which demanded the imitation of certain initially ideal principles inaccessible to direct vision, spoke about imitation as the main task of art. and speaking not so much about what is, but about what should be. Even impressionism, which was the threshold contemporary art, still talked about imitation, although attachment to objective world it was already noticeably weakened.
- Aristotle. Politics, 1340a.
- Aristotle. Poetics, 1448c.
- Ibid., 1450a, b.
“We have not a shadow of a doubt that some changes will come before the end of this century. Tormented by the tedious and generally useful conversations of those who have neither the wit for exaggeration nor the spirit for romance, tired of those intelligent ones whose reminiscences are always based on memories, whose statements inevitably reduce to the probable, and who are obliged to present a minute-by-minute report with evidence to every semi-literate who accidentally stuck his head in the door, the Society will certainly sooner or later return to its lost leader - an educated and charming liar. It will forever remain a mystery to us who was the first, and without thinking of embarking on a primitive pursuit, told the astonished people at sunset cavemen how he pulled a megatherium out of the sparkling darkness of his jasper cave, or defeated a mammoth in a fair fight and returned with its bloody tusks; for not one of the modern anthropologists, with all their vaunted science, has found the trivial courage to tell us about it. But whatever his clan and tribe, he was undoubtedly the founder secular communication, since the purpose of a liar is to charm, delight and please. The liar is the cornerstone of every civilized society, and without him any dinner, even in the palaces of the great of this world, is as boring as a lecture of the Royal Society, a debate of the United Authors, or some farce of Mr. Burnard.
And not only society will accept him with with open arms. Art, having escaped from the prison of realism, will rush towards him and shower his lying, beautiful lips with kisses, knowing that he is the only owner of the great secret of her victories, which states that Truth is solely a matter of style; and at this time Life is poor, probable, uninteresting human life, - tired of repeating itself endlessly to the delight of Mr. Herbert Spencer, scientific historians and compilers of statistics will obediently follow in his footsteps, trying to reproduce in their own simple and uncouth way the miracles about which he speaks.
Undoubtedly, critics will appear who, like a certain writer from the Saturday Review, will begin to seriously judge the storyteller for his lack of knowledge natural history, and whose measure of the work of imagination will be their own lack of it. They will raise their ink-stained hands in horror if some honest citizen, who has never traveled beyond the fence of his garden in his life, describes the most fascinating journeys, like Sir John Mandeville, or, like the great Raleigh, writes the whole history of mankind, without having the slightest idea about the past. In search of protection and justification, they will hide behind the broad back of the one who made Prospero a magician and gave him Caliban and Ariel as servants; him, who heard the Tritons blowing their trumpets among the coral reefs of the Enchanted Island and the fairies singing in the forests near Athens; him, who led a ghostly procession of kings across the foggy Scottish moors and hid Hecate in a cave with the prophetic sisters. They, as is usual with us, will call on Shakespeare and will quote this hackneyed passage, completely forgetting that Hamlet deliberately issued this unfortunate aphorism about the fact that the task of Art is to hold a mirror up to Nature in order to convince others of his complete insanity in matters art
S.: Well, well. Another cigarette, please.
V.: My friend, no matter what everyone says, these are just words in the mouth of the hero of the play and have no more in common with Shakespeare’s true views on art than Iago’s speeches have with his true moral convictions. But let me read this to the end.
“The perfection of Art lies within itself, and not externally. An external measure of similarity cannot be applied to it. Art is more of a cover than a mirror. Its flowers and birds are unknown to fields and forests, it creates and destroys worlds and can pull the moon from the sky with a purple thread. It has “forms that are more alive than people,” and it is a great collection of originals, when everything that exists is just unfinished copies. In his eyes, Nature has neither law nor constancy. It can work miracles whenever it pleases, and at its call monsters crawl out of their depths. By his will, the walnut groves will bloom in winter and snow will cover the ripe corn fields. At one word from him, frost will place his silver palm on the burning lips of June, and winged lions will crawl out of the caves in the Lydian hills. Dryads peek from behind the bushes as it passes by, and dark-skinned fauns smile mysteriously as it approaches. He is surrounded by hawk-headed gods and galloping centaurs.”
S.: I like this image. Is this the end of the article?
V.: No. After this there is another section, but it is purely practical. It simply contains a list of methods that would help revive this lost Art of Lying.
S.: Before you start reading it, I would like to ask one question. What do you mean when you say that “poor, probable, uninteresting human life” will try to reproduce the wonders of art? I fully understand your objections to treating art as a reflection. From your point of view, this would put a genius in the position of a cracked mirror. But you won’t seriously argue that Life imitates Art, and that Life is, in essence, a reflection, and Art is reality?
V.: Of course I will. No matter how paradoxical it may seem, and paradoxes are a dangerous thing, Life really imitates art much more than Art imitates life. Modern England had the opportunity to see firsthand how a certain strange and bewitching type of beauty, invented and outlined by two artists with a vivid imagination, influenced Life so much that wherever you go - to a private exhibition or to an art salon - you come across these mysterious eyes of the Rosetti dream, the high, chiseled neck, the strange, angular jaw, the flowing, shading hair that he so passionately loved, the charming femininity in “The Golden Staircase,” the flowering lips and weary comeliness in “Laus Amoris,” the passionately pale face of Andromeda, the slender arms and supple beauty of Vivien in "Merlin's Dream" And it has always been like this. A great artist creates a type, and Life tries to copy it and reproduce it in a popular form, like an enterprising publisher. Neither Holbein nor Vandyck found what they gave us in England. They themselves produced their own types, and Life, with its pronounced penchant for imitation, undertook to provide the master with nature. The Greeks, with their artistic flair, understood this well and therefore placed a statue of Hermes or Apollo in the bride’s bedchamber so that her children would come out as charming as those works of art that she looked at in passion or anguish. They knew that Life takes from art not only spirituality, depth of thought or feeling, spiritual storms and peace of mind, but that it can also follow its color and form, reproducing the dignity of Phidias and the grace of Praxiteles. This is where their hostility to realism arose. They didn’t like it for purely social reasons. They had the feeling that realism was making people ugly, and they were absolutely right. We are trying to improve the living conditions of the nation through clean air, sunlight, quality water and disgusting looking boxes as improved housing for the lower classes. All this improves health, but does not create beauty. It requires Art, and the true followers of the great artist are not formal imitators, but those who themselves become the same as his works - plastically, as in the times of the Greeks, or portrait, as in our days; in short, Life is the best and only follower of Art.
O. Wilde’s theory of aestheticism is also inspired by the novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and “The Prison Confession”.
Aesthetics like new literary direction originated in late XIX century and introduced new views and values into literature, the main of which is beauty is the highest value and sole purpose art, A the search for beauty in its various manifestations is the meaning of life.
Aestheticism broke with classical aesthetics, dating back to the ancient tradition, based on the idea of the inextricable unity of goodness and beauty, moral and aesthetic, physical and spiritual. Aestheticism not only separates beauty from goodness, but often contrasts them with each other.
One of the most important tasks of aestheticism is the belief that art exists for art's sake.
2. Oscar Wilde - head of English aestheticism. The theory of beauty, which formed the basis of his own work, biography, was called aestheticism. Among his early works (a collection of poems from 1881), a commitment to aesthetic direction decadence, but most clearly express his aesthetic views more late works 1890s, such as The Happy Prince and Other Tales, 1888; "Pomegranate House", 1891; "The Decline of the Art of Lying", 1889; “The Critic as an Artist,” 1890. He most fully revealed the problems of his work in his only novel, “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” 1891.
Wilde was one of the pioneers of the new art, claiming that art is a mirror that reflects whoever looks into it, and not life at all. The topic raised by Wilde had big influence on the subsequent development of European aesthetics.
Subjective-idealistic basis aesthetic views Wilde is most acutely manifested in the treatise “The Decline of Lies”, in which he quite fully sets out his views not only on beauty and art, but also on the relationship between art and life.
The purpose of life is to find expression for itself, and it is art that shows it the forms in which it can realize its desire.
Life imitates art, not the art of life. Life destroys art.
True art is based on lies. Decline art of the 19th century V. (by decline he means realism) is explained by the fact that the “art of lying” has been forgotten.
Salvation for art cannot be found in a return to nature, to life. Denying reality, which exists objectively, outside human consciousness, Wilde tries to prove that it is not art that reflects nature, but nature that reflects art. Art expresses nothing but itself.
4. In the novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray” the problem of the relationship between art and reality is acutely posed; here the writer follows the thesis proclaimed in “Plans”: "Life imitates art."
The problem of the relationship between form and content, eternity and the moment of beauty, art, the relationship between the creator and his creation, the ethical attitude towards art and beauty is also posed.
Vividly shown aestheticization of moral corruption of society, admiring the objects of aristocratic everyday life, which is characteristic of decadence.
Thought about the primacy of art is one of the central ones. Art reflects only those who look at it. In the novel, the portrait, like a work of art, reflects the life of Dorian Gray.
The degradation of art is directly related to the decline high art lies. This is well shown and proven in the novel using the example of the actress Sibyl Vane. Not knowing what love is, the girl fantasized beautifully on stage, as if she was lying, successfully playing the roles of many Shakespearean heroines. Having learned true feeling Having fallen in love with Dorian, she experiences a sharp “decline in the art of lying,” as a result of which a tragedy happens to her as an actress: she begins to play poorly. And Dorian tells her that “Without your art you are nothing!”
Concept “beautiful” and “beauty” are placed at the highest level of values. Dorian is beautiful, and beauty justifies all the negative aspects of his nature and the flawed moments of his existence.
