The Picture of Dorian Gray

About The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a philosophical novel by Oscar Wilde. A shorter novella-length version was published in the July 1890 issue of the American periodical Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. Wilde then expanded that text into a novel published as a book in April 1891.

The story revolves around a portrait of Dorian Gray by Basil Hallward, an artist impressed and infatuated by Dorian's beauty. Through Basil, Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, and he soon is enthralled by the aristocrat's hedonistic worldview: that beauty and sensual fulfilment are the only things worth pursuing in life. Newly understanding that his beauty will fade, Dorian expresses the desire to sell his soul, to ensure that the picture, rather than he, will age and fade. The wish is granted, and Dorian pursues a libertine life of varied amoral experiences while staying young and beautiful; all the while, his portrait ages and records every one of Dorian's sins.

Wilde's only novel, it was subject to much controversy and criticism in its time but has come to be recognized as a classic of gothic literature

THE PREFACE:

The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the
artist is art’s aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a
new material his impression of beautiful things.
The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.
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.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well
written, or badly written. That is all.
The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his
own face in a glass.
The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not
seeing his own face in a glass. The moral life of man forms part of the
subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use
of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things
that are true can be proved. No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical
sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is
ever morbid. The artist can express everything. Thought and language are to
the artist instruments of an art. Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for
an art. From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of
the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor’s craft is the type.
All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who 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 really 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.