O.Wilde, Preface to 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'

The artist is the creator of beautiful things. (...)
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. (...)
No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything. (...)
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...

O. Wilde (1854-1900),
Preface to 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'


Sunday, December 12, 2010

W.Hogarth, Marriage-à-la-mode


Marriage-à-la-mode  (picture n° 1)
National Gallery, London (1743-45)

William Hogarth  (1697-1764)
painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic, cartoonist


In the years 1743-1745, William Hogarth  painted the six pictures of 'Marriage-à-la-mode' regarded by many critics as his best example of his serially-planned story cycles.
Painting these pictures Hogarth wanted to convey a strong moralistic warning: as a matter of fact, they represent the disastrous  results of an ill-considered marriage for money, an habit which charaterized the XVIII century English upper class society. 
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