The Aesthetic Movement

The Aesthetic Movement developed in the universities and intellectual circles at the end of the 19th century to re-define the role of art. It reflected a sense of frustration and a sense of uncertainties of the artist and reacted against materialism and the restrictive moral code of the bourgeoisie. The roots of the English Movement can be traced back to the Romantic poet John Keats, but the theorist of this movement in England was Walter Pater. According to him, life should be lived in the spirit of art, namely as a work of art, filling each passing moment with intense experience, feeling all kind of sensations. The motto was Art for Arts Sake. So the artist was seen as the transcriber not of the world, but of his sense of it. Art had no reference to life, and therefore it had nothing to do with morality and need not be didactic. These ideas influenced especially Oscar Wilde, but also the decadent poets.

Dandy
The term dandy was used for the first time in a song sung by the British during the American revolution. It referred to the man who boasts (vantarsi) about his appearance even if he is wearing ordinary clothes. Then became dandyism a lifestyle that developed in England and France with vanity, extravagance and refinement as the most positive ideas.

Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde was the son of a surgeon and of a literary woman and was born in Dublin in 1854. He graduated in Classics in Oxford and then became a student and follower of Walter Paper accepting the theory of Art for Arts Sake and became a dandy. Then he travelled to United States where he gave some lectures about the Aesthetic Movement. On coming back to Europe, he was known as a great talker and became a celebrity. He wrote a lot of plays and drama and also short stories for his children and novels. The most important one is The Picture of Dorian Gray. Later he was convicted of homosexual practices and imprisoned. When he was released he was a broken man and died alone in Paris.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a novel set in London at the end of the 19th century. The protagonist is Dorian Gray, a young man whose beauty fascinates a painter, called Basil Hallward, who paints his portrait. Dorian wanted to be eternal young and his desire was satisfied, but the sign of the age appear on the portrait. Dorian lives only for pleasure, making use of everybody and letting people die because of his insensitivity. Later Dorian destroys the portrait, because it is the witness to his spiritual corruption, but he mysteriously kills himself. At the moment of death the picture returns to its original purity and Dorians face becomes withered (secco, rovinato). The moral of this novel is that every excess must be punished and reality cannot be escaped; when Dorian destroys the picture, he cannot avoid the punishment for all his sins (peccato), that is death. Finally the picture, restored to its original beauty, illustrates Wildes theories of art: art survives people and art is eternal.

Preface
It consists of a series of aphorisms considered the basic principles of Aestheticism in England. He established the rules of Aestheticism following the ideas of his master Walter Paper.