"Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty."
-Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
This is exactly the point I wanted to make in my english paper this year. Too bad I had yet to find a $2 copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray in the dollar aisle of Target to find the quote that would say it how I meant it. Not that I think it's really a fault, but I've always believed that beautiful things are there to be beautiful. Not critiqued to unearth something ugly beneath.
In Jessica Kerwin Jenkin's Encyclopedia of the Exquisite, she includes l'art pour l'art, or art for art's sake. She quotes the American painter John McNeill Whistler saying...
"'Art should be independent of all claptrap,' Whistler proclaimed, 'should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism, and the like.'"
In Jessica Kerwin Jenkin's Encyclopedia of the Exquisite, she includes l'art pour l'art, or art for art's sake. She quotes the American painter John McNeill Whistler saying...
"'Art should be independent of all claptrap,' Whistler proclaimed, 'should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism, and the like.'"
and that is enough food for thought for today.
XO ROSIE
XO ROSIE
wasn't that a nice glimpse into my english paper type writing?
1 comment:
Just finished reading this book...wonderful quote...
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