The Immoral Artist
By Gloria
I first came across Oscar Wilde’s writing as a child. His haunting fairy tales made a considerable impression on me. Every time I read them, I felt moved to tears.
My favorite story was “the Nightingale and the Rose,” a story about sacrifice for love. The brutal conflict between pure love and materialism, which is so beautifully expressed in this story has had a profound effect on me and the way I view the place of art in society.
He is one of the most quoted satirists of the English language; his works continue to be in print and widely read today. His plays are presented to great success all over the world, but it is in his poems, fairy-tales, philosophical and dramatic works that one encounters Wilde’s most personal and moving writing.
Oscar Wilde fundamentally challenged society’s axioms of good and evil, of moral and immoral, the meaning and purpose of art. Using his razor-sharp wit, he showed us the complexities of human nature, the paradoxes in our behavior, and the challenges we face in diving beyond the dogmas we’ve subjected ourselves to.
He was tried in England for “immoral acts.” However, it was his work that was on trial. I always find it paradoxical that he, Oscar Wilde, the master of the English language, was made to answer for his art in court. And slowly but surely, he lost his trials, unable to defend it.
I also find deeply disturbing to know that Oscar was crushed by a brutal conviction. In his essay “The Soul of Man Under Socialism,” he talks about the need for all people to reach enlightenment and self-knowledge. In his imagination, socialism “would free men from manual labor and allow them to devote their time to creative pursuits, thus developing their soul.”
Ironically, he was convicted to two years of hard labor and only lived two more after that. But it was during these years that he wrote perhaps his most powerful works: “De Profundis” and “The Ballad of the Reading Gaol”.
What has changed today? One hundred twenty years later, we keep quoting him and admiring his satiric gifts, but are we any different than those who put him on trial?
It appears so on the surface. Society, at least in the West, seems to have gotten a little less homophobic. We have broken down the boundaries of past centuries and found numerous new modes of expression. From poetry, through music, literature, art, and in film, we’ve managed to expand the possibilities in capturing and giving life to the many colors and shades of colors of our existence and relationship to the Universe. Our perception of beauty as the sole purpose of art has been metamorphosed into the inner desire to delve into the outskirts of the extreme, of showing the ultimate ugliness and contrasts of our personas.
But are we connected to what our artists have been showing us, or are we trying to redefine our ideas of what’s good art and bad art based on our inner need to explain things? By neatly organizing and rationalizing artistic creations, analyzing them to death, and trying to teach and to define them, aren’t we moralizing once again?
And then there are those excellent works that have fallen victim to the extreme kitsch.
As you may know, one of Munch’s four “Screams” sold some years ago for a whopping 120 million dollars, apparently bought in a 12-minute auction at Sotheby’s by a top New York art collector. Something about this sale bothered me tremendously. Almost as much as the trivialization of these mega-famous works of art. There is nothing more appalling than seeing Mozart’s face on candy or Klimt’s “The Kiss” on a journal …
But “the Scream” has been made into more kitsch than is humanly imaginable. As much as I’ve tried to avoid this from happening to me, I’ve somehow been exposed to more sightings of the poor fellow from “the Scream” than I am willing to admit. I have seen him recreated on posters, positioned on umbrellas, hats, coffee mugs, t-shirts, and even, most disturbingly, as life-size balloon-doll.
And now, when I think that the painting is hanging in someone’s fancy living room, silently screaming over the heads of posh cocktail party-goers and tedious luncheons … I am ready to cry too. I am reminded of Rothko and his refusal to see his canvases at the dining room of the Four Seasons, and I wonder what Oscar Wilde would have thought of that sale. I am guessing that he would have been appalled, based on the poem he wrote about the auction of Keats’ Letters.
The 1893 portrait of a man hearing “nature screaming in his blood” has been elevated from mere kitsch to the ultimate decor.
And what about music?
If we ignore and forget the fact that most people on earth know nothing of music beyond what’s currently on the pop charts, we will find that even the most devoted classical music fans rarely fail to astonish with their desire to organize their musical tastes into finely crafted cupboards.
What is the most common musical perception of our society?
The same champagne drinking millionaires who hang paintings like “the Scream” on their walls have been more than eager to explain how they hate all classical music written after Brahms (and in some cases even Brahms himself,) because it is too “modern.” Bartók’s music is ugly, Shostakovich — cold, Mahler — boring, Berg — ugly.
I won’t go on.
As much as we’d like to think we’ve changed, the fact remains that in our attempt to find the middle, to center our lives, and to surround ourselves with comfort and stability, we’ve achieved nothing but mediocrity. We’ve let things go around us, we’ve sacrificed our planet, and we have allowed the worst of humanity to take over all the power.
And while we have stopped calling works of art “moral” or “immoral,” we continue to close our eyes and ears to the few things that matter in this world.
In times such as the current pandemic, art and science are the only paths to redemption. Are we willing to face that reality? Or are we going to continue living like Dorian Gray, thinking that by hiding our portrait from view, we will make our ugliness disappear?