Student Essay on Oscar Wilde's Views on Art

Oscar Wilde's Views on Art

Summary:   Attempting to define the term art, this essay's author explores writer Oscar Wilde’s take on the subject. The works of painters Andres Serrano and Chris Ofili and writer Jack Kerouac are explored. The argument is made that art defines itself.

I'm at wit's end here; I've looked in countless periodicals, dictionaries, and reference books. I've been all over the internet, found some very interesting things that we needn't go into here, and don't even get me started on the thesaurus. All this research and I still can't find a good definition of the word art. This is an Extended Definition Essay! A definition is kind of an important thing to have, don't you think? Okay lets just calm down and look at this again. The most common definition I could find told me that art is a one syllable noun that means: expressions within a medium. Okay that make sense but that can't be all of it. The statement is to textbook for a term that represents as much as "art" does. So I decided to look into the origin of the word and I found that the word art comes to us from the old French "arte." They get it from the Latin word "artem" which means... well the same thing as art. It turns out that the term "art" hasn't changed in hundreds of years. Can you sense my frustration? I was about to through in the proverbial towel, but then I met a new friend and he told me as long as I didn't mind his opinionated point of view that he'd be happy to look at some examples of Expressions and mediums in art and together maybe we could come up with something. My buddies name is Oscar Wilde. Oscar was a dramatist, novelist and a poet that existed in the latter half of the 19th century and is probably best know for his novel "The Portrait of Dorian Gray."

I'd first like to take a look at some of the mediums that artists use. Mediums that at glance seems quite normal but if a closer inspection might catch a few people off guard. One of the most infamous works in recent history is probably the photograph "Piss Christ"; it was created by Andres Serrano in 1989. At first glance, you see Christ on the cross in a sea of bubbles and color; bright gold, to warm amber, fading to darkness. Quite striking and if you had never heard of it or if I hadn't just told you the name of it, you may have thought, that it was a beautiful piece of religious art and it is, but this does not sit well with everyone. Quite a few people believe that Serrano's piece is blasphemous and more than once has caused ordinary people to commit crimes of anger.

In Serrano's picture, the mediums he uses causes people to get angry because he drops a religious symbol in to a jar of piss, but what if anger was one of the mediums used in the creation of art.

In 1998 The Tate Museum of Modern Art awarded the Turner Award to Chris Ofili for his "inventiveness, exuberance, humor and technical richness in painting," He also experiments outside the traditional confines of oil paint, introducing things like elephant dung into his work. This angered the more traditional artist Ray Hutchins so much that he dumped a truck load of manure on the steps of the Tate Museum, he named his piece "modern art is a load of bullshit"

Nether Serrano, Ofili, or Hutchins for that matter use traditional mediums in their before mentioned works. They all show Expressions within mediums, but I didn't know if they helped define the term "art", so I asked Oscar and he said .".. the morality of art consist of the perfect use of an imperfect medium." He also added "No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style." Oscar wouldn't say if he liked these pieces or not but he did say that he felt they were true to our definition. I kind of think he liked them.

Now I would like to step away from mediums for a minute and look at expressions or how one expresses himself. Have you ever wondered if a person's life could be defined as art"

Jean-Louis "Jack" bebris de Kerouac was born in 1922 in Lewell, Ma. Throughout his years, Jack Kerouac lived his art or his life was his art. From the reluctant spokesman of the "Beat" Generation to back home in his family's parlor as a child, creating cartoon scripts and acting in his own silent movies. Fast-forward twenty or so years to 1949 Jack takes a trip from the East coast to San Francisco that kicks off a decade of travel. Over the next ten years Kerouac would cross our continent several times. Always searching for what life had to offer; weather it was jazz in the Tea houses in New Orleans to City Lights in The City, from hitchin' on the road to finding the Blues in Mexico City. These travels would become the inspiration form a collection of books that would later be called "The Duluoz Legend." These stories expressed life as it was meant to be, a free soul chasseing after the heels of Muse following wherever she led.

So again I think we should allow Oscar the chance to express his thoughts. This time on the life of Kerouac and how it give it's self to art, "The moral life of man forms part of the subject matter of the artist. Thought and language are to the artist instruments of art."

Oscar and I both have way of ending this paper and since age should always come before beauty, so I'll let the dead guy go first.

"All art is at once surface and symbol. Those that go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital. When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless."

I think what Oscar has been trying to tell us is that art defines itself, weather its Kerouac's life adventures or Christ in a jar of piss there both just "expressions within a medium" or "art." Ha, the fuckin' dictionary was right who'd a thought something that's so simple could explain something so complex. I also hope that the next time you're viewing a piece of art you'll take a minute to ponder before you decide weather you like it or if you think it's just a pile of shit. I think I'll leave you now with one more quote from Mr. Wilde that I think sums things up nicely "There is no such thing as a moral or immoral piece of art. Art is either done well or not done well. That is all."

Thanks Oscar.