Art and Life in the Picture of Dorian Gray
The novel opens with a theory of the purpose of art, which Wilde reasons out until he reaches that "all art is quite useless". Whether or not this is some kind of warning from the narrator, we as readers don't know, but what follows certainly seems to illustrate his point. It presents art in many forms and the danger of information technology when it is taken besides literally or believed too deeply. It starts with a painting, which alters the perspectives that look on information technology and seems to alter itself. One time Basil has attributed to the painting the power of capturing the spirit of Dorian Gray, and once Dorian has attributed to information technology the power to host and represent his ain soul, the painting has a unsafe life of its own. Dorian'south romance with the actress Sybil Vane is composed of the romantic characters she played and the drama of each nightly performance. To see the daughter die on stage and so detect her backstage live and beautiful is a supernatural kind of existence that cannot last. The danger of seeing life simply through the lens of art is that ane must stay at a distance or run a risk ruining the illusion, simply like a delusion. This is Dorian'south trouble, and Basil'south trouble, and through these examples we acquire that the closer one comes to fine art, the closer one comes to some kind of death or destruction.
The fix upwardly of Dorian'southward globe in society and in his own dwelling is full of pictures, stills and images through which nosotros come across life frozen or removed. Whether portraits, tapestries, or scenes, these images build up and up in the novel until Dorian'south climactic act of stabbing his own painting. It is the ever-nowadays pressure of fine art—of being a piece of living art himself, and of seeing real life mirrored in the portrait—that destroys Dorian. In add-on, equally we read the novel, we are enlightened of the power of the narrator to embody the characters omnisciently, and to implant repetitions of their item vocabulary, imitating the influence that Lord Henry's memorable phrases have on Dorian's mind. Every bit a piece of art itself, the novel invites us to question its grade and purpose, every bit the statement of the preface suggests.
Fine art and the Fake of Life ThemeTracker
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Art and the Faux of Life appears in each chapter of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Art and the Imitation of Life Quotes in The Film of Dorian Grey
Below you will find the of import quotes in The Picture of Dorian Grey related to the theme of Art and the Fake of Life.
To reveal fine art and conceal the artist is fine art's aim.
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All art is quite useless
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"He is all my art to me now."
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"An creative person should create cute things just should put nothing of his own life into them"
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"Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, simply equally nothing can cure the senses but the soul"
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"If it were only the other way! If it were I who was always young, and the picture that was to grow former!"
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"I have seen her in every age and every costume. Ordinary women never appeal to 1's imagination. They are express to their century."
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Mrs. Vane stock-still her eyes on him, and intensified the smile. She mentally elevated her son to the dignity of an audition. She felt certain that the tableau was interesting.
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"The painted scenes were my world. I knew zip only shadows and idea them existent."
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"So I take murdered Sybil Vane," said Dorian Gray, one-half to himself, "murdered her every bit surely as if I had cutting her niggling pharynx with a knife. Even so the roses are non less lovely for that."
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"The girl never really lived and so she never really died."
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"One twenty-four hours, a fatal day I sometimes think, I adamant to paint a wonderful portrait of you as you lot really are, not in the costume of expressionless ages, merely in your own dress and in your on time."
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Information technology was a poisonous book. The heavy odour of incense seemed to cling about its pages and trouble the brain.
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And, certainly, to him Life itself was the first, the greatest, of the arts, and for it all the other arts seemed to exist but a preparation.
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What was that loathsome cherry dew that gleamed, wet and glistening, on 1 of the hands, as though the canvas had sweated blood?
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"She is very clever, as well clever for a woman. She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness. It is the feet of clay that make the gold of the image precious."
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The coarse ball, the loathsome den, the rough violence of matted life, the very vileness of thief and outcast, were more than vivid, in their intense actuality of impression, than all the gracious shapes of Art, the dreamy shadows of Vocal.
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If the tapestry did but tremble in the wind, he shook. The dead leaves that were blown against the leaded panes seemed to him like his own wasted resolutions and wild regrets.
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"You would cede anybody, Harry, for the sake of an epigram."
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"It is non in you Dorian to commit a murder. I am distressing if I hurt your vanity by maxim so, but I assure you lot it is truthful. Crime belongs exclusively to the lower orders. I don't arraign them in the smallest caste. I should fancy that criminal offence was to them what fine art is to us, simply a method of procuring extraordinary sensations."
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His beauty had been to him but a mask, his youth but a mockery. What was youth at best? A green, unripe time, a fourth dimension of shallow moods and sickly thoughts.
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