Dorian Gray: Aesthetic And Ethical Ideas

In the next section, the principal characteristics of Aestheticism are outlined, in particular as they relate to Wilde’s artistic vision. Subsequently, some of Wilde’s aesthetic and ethical ideas in “Intentions” will be addressed. Significant parts of the plot of “Dorian Gray”, which will be analysed in the last subdivision of this paper, put the theories proposed in the preface and in the essays to the test (Cf. Cohen 108; Ellmann 315).
3.Aestheticism and Wilde’s Concept of Art
Wilde is widely known as a leading figure of the Aesthetic movement. Spearheaded by French symbolists, the Aesthetic movement quickly spread to England where it reached its peak in the last decades of the 19th century. Aggressively, the aesthetes reacted against contemporary literature and conventional philosophies of art. The purpose of art, they maintained, was to have no purpose beyond its own existence (Gillespie 4, 5). This idea finds its ultimate expression in the catch phrase “Art for Art’s Sake” or in the famous rewording “all art is quite useless” by Wilde (Wilde 17). According to this view, art should not serve as a guide to moral instruction nor should it serve any other social or political purposes. The aesthetes argued instead that the primary function of art was to be beautiful and provide pleasure, which would work in combination to justify art’s existence (Gillespie 5). Yet, the inherent value of such notions depends largely on the subject (it is “a matter of subjective value and