Aesthetic movement - The picture of Dorian Gray

Aesthetic movement

At the end of the nineteenth century, a new movement was developed as a reaction to Victorian materialistic values: the aesthetic movement. It reflected the sense of frustration of the artist, his refusal to the materialism and his need to redefine the role of art. The aesthetic movement is an anti victorian reaction and was influenced by a philosopher Water Peter who introduced a new idea of beauty and life: “Art for art’s sake”
Differently from all the Victorian writers, whose main intention was that of teaching, according to those writers’ view, art should give some lessons and should be moralistic.
On the contrary, those new writers who were totally against the Victorians, didn’t want to be didactic, they didn’t want to teach anything to anyone, because they believed that art is only an art that gives pleasure, so art must be appreciated for its immediate pleasure.
The aesthetic movement is a cult for beauty because they were strongly convinced that art was superior to life because art in their view can be made perfect (it’s a paradox, because life could only copy art, to become perfect).
Moreover, art is everlasting, differently from men, who have a very limited period of time.

The picture of Dorian Gray

This is the only novel he wrote, in fact as he was a playwright (he mainly wrote plays). The setting is the high society, the aristocracy.
Dorian Gray was a young man whose beauty fascinated a painter, Basil Hallward, who decided to portray him. At the beginning, Dorian was not interested in being painted, but Lord Henry convinced him saying that he was so beautiful that his beauty should be stopped on a painting. He reflected also on the passing of time, that would change Dorian’s body and beauty. Dorian is so shocked by this, that in the end he decides to accept being painted, because only the painting could maintain Dorian’s beauty forever.
However, at the moment of accepting the eternity of his youth, Dorian made a kind of agreement with the devil, and he spent all the following years having a beautiful life, with the result that he was always young.
He committed also a lot of crimes (when he met the painter Basil, they had a discussion because the painting was revealing little by little all the ugliness that represented all the crimes committed by Dorian, so while Dorian went on being always beautiful, young and attractive, the painting showed the corruption that belonged to Dorian, and when Basil’s painting was not so beautiful as he painted it, Dorian killed the painter. After that, he locked the painting into a room not to be seen by everyone because the painting was very ugly.
The painting represented the double, Dorian’s soul which was dark and criminal.
So, the painting represented all the negative aspects of Dorian’s crimes.
For some mysterious reason, Dorian stubbed the painting, and since that moment, the painting became beautiful again. But in that moment he died.
The moral of this novel is that every excess must be punished and reality cannot be escaped, in fact when Dorian destroys the picture, he cannot avoid the punishment, that is death.