I agree with you here. Finding stuff like this out does impact my response to a piece of art. Yet I still want to know because it complicates my pleasure. I am very wary of simple emotions - at least in me. They seem to me to indicate a want of depth, of knowledge, of experience.Suzanne wrote:MaryLupin wrote:I don't agree with it either, this is how I think Wilde see society, how it feels. The best example I can think of would be, to see a beautiful painting, something that touches your heart, how lovely. Then finding out it was painted by a pedophile. I know this is exaggerated, but would the painting be as lovely?I am afraid I have to disagree with the idea that only the beautiful soul can create true art.
I don't know if I agree with you about Wilde though. I do think he was upset (understandably) with the way he was treated and with the "Philistines" who judged his book because of its homoeroticism. He wasn't free to be who he was born to be. And of course that came out in the book. I do wonder how much of what happened to him he saw as his own faulty judgment and how much blame he placed on the shoulders of others? Yet at the end of the book Dorian refuses all self blame and all responsibility and is outraged when his picture doesn’t show a favourable reaction to his one good deed. It seems to me that this says Wilde favoured the idea of an individual’s responsibility for the state of his own life. But I don’t know.
Well there is a scene near the end when the still young Dorian is talking to Hallward and he takes a flower out of his coat...is that the one you mean?Suzanne wrote:Still pondering Harry. Someone had a flower in his lapel, Wilde always had a flower in his lapel. Who is it? I want to say it was Harry, or was it Dorian? Drat, can't find it.
No. Humans will never stop judging. And of course, we will never be either right or wrong about the judgments we make, not in any sure sense. All we can do is assess ourselves and each other against some standard we hold to be a good guide. It's just that what Wilde thought to be a good guide was quite different than what many of his contemporaries thought to be proper. The only reason we agree more with Wilde than with his critics, is because people like us have fallen more in line with the aesthetic of the artist and tend to reject ideas that try to limit artistic expression and creation. I think I have a good guide with which to judge but I also recognize that just because I think it is better (and act like it too) doesn't mean it is better. Am I being clear?Suzanne wrote:We are the future, PoDG is a century old, has society stopped judging?