How the doctrine of Art for Art’s sake is expressed in the works of Oscar

Wilde and Somerset Maugham?

Introduction

What is the definition of Art for Art’s sake?

A slogan meaning that the beauty of the fine arts is reason enough for pursuing
them — that art does not have to serve purposes taken from politics, religion,
economics, and so on. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Edgar Allan Poe, Somerset
Maugham and Oscar Wilde argued for the doctrine of Art for Art's sake.

Art and the Industrial Revolution

The concept of "Art for Art's sake" was a European social construct and was
largely a product of the Industrial Revolution. In many cultures, the making of
artistic images was a religious practice. In medieval Europe, art served primarily to
ornament churches and palaces until the rise of a middle class created a demand for
decorative art, illustrations, portraits, landscapes and paintings that documented
what objects looked like. The Industrial Revolution brought about drastic changes
which created serious social problems, such as the concentration of large numbers
of people in urban slums, which caused people to question traditional values and
reject romanticism.

A brief introduction to Oscarwilde and Somerset Maugham

On October sixteenth 1854, Oscar Wilde was born at 21 Westland Road,

Dublin, as the second son of Sir William Wilde and Jane Francesca Elgee, Lady
Wilde, who wrote under the name “Speranza”. He played various roles as a poet,
journalist, critic and theorist, and writer. His creative writing started from poems
and short stories. But The Picture of Dorian Gray, a novel written for Lippincott’s
Magazine in 1890, really earned name for him. The extended version of The
Picture of Dorian Gray was published in 1891. The Picture of Dorian Gray
indicates his aesthetic ideas but at the same time, this book was used as evidence of
his “immorality” that put him in the prison.

William Somerset Maugham, playwright, novelist and short-story writer was

born of British parents in Paris in 1874. Maugham explains his philosophy of life
as a resigned atheism and a certain skepticism about the extent of man’s innate
goodness and intelligence; it is this that gives his work its astringent cynicism.

Both Oscar Wilde and Somerset Maugham were playwrights, novelists. They were
the representatives of new aesthetic movement.

Body

The history of art for art’s sake

The phrase 'Art for Art's sake' condenses the notion that art has its own value and
should be judged apart from any themes which it might touch on, such as morality,
religion, history, or politics. It teaches that judgements of aesthetic value should
not be confused with those proper to other spheres of life. The idea has ancient
roots, but the phrase first emerged as a rallying cry in 19th century France, and
subsequently became central to the British Aesthetic movement. Although the
phrase has been little used since, its legacy has been at the heart of 20th century
ideas about the autonomy of art, and thus crucial to such different bodies of
thought as those of formalism, modernism, and the avant-garde. Today, deployed
more loosely and casually, it is sometimes put to very different ends, to defend the
right of free expression, or to appeal for art to uphold tradition and avoid causing
offense.

Socially and historically the Art for Art’s Sake Movement is embedded in an age of
great changes in all areas of life mainly caused by the Industrial Revolution. First
of all it brought the end of the medieval feudal system with its more or less
“compact and cohesive” structure of life and little reason for the emergence of
specific groups with a strong sense of identity and of their opposition to other
groups. Artists did not need to justify themselves and their activities. Due to
industrialization and specialization in all domains of life, separate groups with
separate mentalities evolved. A social and cultural clash began to appear between a
lot of those groups: middle class against working class, citizens against artists,
artists against scientists. Artists began to regard themselves as such, having certain
rights and responsibilities. So the development of Art for Art’s Sake has to be seen
in the context of the movement to pluralism. Secondly, the Industrial Revolution
caused an acceleration of social change. With the growth of the middle class not
only social problems came along, but also a change in the literary market. As the
newly industrialized country was in need of trained workforce, education was
improved. As a by-effet a literate, reading public evolved in the 19th century
England. From 1800 onwards, artists were no longer dependent on aristocratic or
upper class patrons. Instead they were often forced to write what the public wanted
to read. One effect was the differentiation between real art and mass production or
trivial literature, another was a change in the relationship between the artist and his
public. The writers no longer wrote for the aristocratic classes or for noblemen,
whom they had treated with respect, addressing somebody superior to them in
rank, but for social or intellectual inferiors. Thirdly, the Industrial Revolution made
ugliness, destruction of nature, urbanisation and overpopulation permanent features
of life in towns and cities. Artists, who felt to be dedicated to nature and beauty,
were soon depressed and frustrated by this unaesthetic atmosphere of living. The
Romantic writers began to react by fleeing into other, imaginative worlds to escape
from reality. They appreciated what Industrialization had began to destroy: nature,
beauty, sensitivity. A fourth outcome was the spread of the benthamist
Utilitarianism and the scientific mentality. The emphasis was put on material,
useful and practical elements in life. Everything was judged by its utility and its
material advantage. Related to art that meant it was either completely useless and
had to be abolished or every art had to fulfill a certain, usually didactic, purpose.
Furthermore, everything that couldn’t be seen or touched or at least explained in a
coherent theory, was believed not to exist. This attitude had serious consequences
to religion. As faith is something invisible and the existence of God could not be
prooved by scientific means, people were no longer sure about his existence. The
hole produced through the weakening of the church and religious believes was
often filled with even stricter moral values, which could be undermined by
philosophic theory. Religion seemed no longer suitable as a basis for life, instead
the categorical imperative and moral values based on philosophy became
important. This milieu of morality made an important contribution to the
importance of Art for Art’s Sake in Victorian times. In a permeable society with no
fixed rules, such a movement would not have caught the attraction of the public
and would therefore – if it had emerged at all – have disappeared very fast. Only in
this environment the aesthetic writers were able to produce something interesting
and the decadents were able to shock with their works. The reaction to these
circumstances and the dealing with the loss of sense in life is characteristic of all
literature of the 19th century. Some tried to criticise, some to improve, others
created better worlds in literature or wanted to revive ancient or medieval times.
The adherents of Art for Art’s Sake tried to completely turn their back on society,
politics, morality and everything apart from art. They claimed a complete
separation of art and life.

The doctrine Art for Art’s sake in the work of Oscar Wilde

In 1887, Oscar Wilde made a lecture tours through the United States where he
preached gaspel of “ Art for Art’s sake “. In a letter that Wilde's editors assign to
April 1891, he clearly states the doctrine of Art of Art's sake, several times
inadvertently revealing the essential incoherence and lack of intellectual rigor in
the notion. He begins by telling one R. Clegg, whom the editors have been unable
to identify, that “Art is useless because its aim is simply to create a mood. It is not
meant to instruct, or to influence action in any way.” Wilde makes clear that he
does not believe true art can function didactically, but if it “simply” creates a
mood, it obviously has an effect as well as an affect, and it is not clear how art,
which is not a thinking, feeling entity, can be for its own sake.

Wilde characteristically continues by asserting that “if the contemplation of a work

of art is followed by activity of any kind, the work is either of a very second-rate
order, or the spectator has failed to realise the complete artistic impression”.
According to him, art creates a mood, it cannot be sterile, superbly or otherwise.
The sloganeering continues when Wilde adds in his second and last paragraph that
“A work of art is useless as a flower is useless. A flower blossoms for its own joy.
We gain a moment of joy by looking at it. That is all that is to be said about our
relations to flowers. Of course man may sell the flower, and so make it useful to
him, but this has nothing to do with the flower. It is not part of its essence. It is
accidental, It is a misuse. All this is very obscure. But the subject is a long one”.
Yes, it is, but Wilde here doesn't manage to rise above naive sentimentalism here,
for flowers do not blossom for their “own joy” — the very notion lapses into what
Ruskin called the Pathetic Fallacy. In fact, flowers exist in a complex network of
relations with their environment that includes other organisms. Throughout their
history flowering plants entered into complex symbiotic relationships with plants.
Later in their history, millions of years after they first evolved, they engaged
human beings who worked hard to cultivate and develop flowers for their beauty.
By ignoring these complex relationships, which provide the context of floral
beauty, Wilde reveals the essential superficiality of the notion of Art for Art's sake.

Oscar Wilde did not invent Aestheticism, but he was a dramatic leader in
promoting the movement near the end of the nineteenth century. Wilde was
especially influenced as a college student by the works of the English poet and the
American writer Edgar Allan Poe. The English essayist Walter Pater, an advocate
of "Art for Art's sake," helped to form Wilde's humanistic aesthetics in which he
was more concerned with the individual, the self, than with popular movements
like Industrialism or Capitalism. Art was not meant to instruct and should not
concern itself with social, moral, or political guidance.

The most important of Wilde's critical works, published in May 1891, is a

volume titled Intentions. It consists of four essays: "The Decay of Lying," "Pen,
Pencil and Poison," "The Critic as Artist," and "The Truth of Masks." These and
the contemporary essay "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" affirm Wilde's
support of Aestheticism and supply the philosophical context for his novel, The
Picture of Dorian Gray.

"The Decay of Lying" was first published in January 1889. Wilde called it a
"trumpet against the gate of dullness" in a letter to Kate Terry Lewis. The dialogue,
which Wilde felt was his best, takes place in the library of a country house in
Nottinghamshire. The participants are Cyril and Vivian, which were the names of
Wilde's sons (the latter spelled "Vyvyan"). Almost immediately, Vivian advocates
one of the tenets of Wilde's Aestheticism: Art is superior to Nature. Nature has
good intentions but can't carry them out. Nature is crude, monotonous, and lacking
in design when compared to Art.

Wilde's approach is that Wainewright's criminal activities reveal the soul of a

true artist. The artist must have a "concentration of vision and intensity of purpose"
that exclude moral or ethical judgment. True aesthetes belong to the "elect," as
Wilde calls them in "The Decay of Lying," and are beyond such concerns. As
creative acts, there is no significant difference between art and murder. The artist
often will conceal his identity behind a mask, but Wilde maintains that the mask is
more revealing than the actual face. Disguises intensify the artist's personality. Life
itself is an art, and the true artist presents his life as his finest work. Wilde, who
attempted to make this distinction in his own life through his attempts to re-create
himself, includes this theme in The Picture of Dorian Gray.

"The Truth of Masks" first appeared in May 1885 under the title "Shakespeare
and Stage Costume." The essay originally was a response to an article written by
Lord Lytton in December 1884, in which Lytton argues that Shakespeare had little
interest in the costumes that his characters wear. Wilde takes the opposite position.

More important within the context of Intentions, Wilde himself always put great
emphasis on appearance and the masks, or costumes, with which the artist or
individual confronts the world.

Wilde also raises the question of self-contradiction. In art, he says, there is no such
thing as an absolute truth: "A Truth is that whose contradictory is also true." This
sentiment recalls Wilde's tremendous respect for the thoughts of Walt Whitman. In
"Song of Myself," Whitman writes

The doctrine of Art for Art’s sake in the work of Somerset Maugham

Somerset Maugham is the writer glorifying “ Art for Art’s sake “ . He used to
quote that:

“The Work of Art. When I watch the audience at a concert or the crowd in the
picture gallery I ask myself sometimes what exactly is their reaction towards the
work of art. It is plain that often they feel deeply, but I do not see that their feeling
has any effect, and if it has no effect its value is slender. Art to them is only a
recreation or a refuge. It rests them from the work which they consider the
justification of their existence or consoles them in their disappointment with
reality. It is the glass of beer which the labourer drinks when he pauses in his toil
or the peg of gin which the harlot takes to snatch a moment's oblivion from the
pain of life. Art for Art's sake means no more than gin for gin's sake. The dilettante
who cherishes the sterile emotions which he receives from the contemplation of
works of art has little reason to rate himself higher than the toper. This is the
attitude of the pessimist. Life is a struggle or a weariness and in art he seeks repose
or forgetfulness. The pessimist refuses reality, but the artist accepts it. The emotion
caused by a work of art has value only if it has an effect on character and so results
in action. Whoever is so affected is himself an artist. The artist's response to the
work of art is direct and reasonable, for in him the emotion is translated into ideas
which are pertinent to his own purposes, and to him ideas are but another form of
action. But I do not mean that it is only painters, poets and musicians who can
respond profitably to the work of art; the value of art would be much diminished;
among artists I include the practitioners of the most subtle, the most neglected and
the most significant of all the arts, the art of life.”

Conclusion

Art for Art’s sake, a slogan which was coined in the early 19th century by the
French philosopher Victor Cousin. The phrase expresses the belief held by many
writers and artists, especially those associated with Aestheticism, that art needs no
justification, that it need serve no political, didactic, or other end.

His essay ‘The Soul of Man Under Socialism,’ published in 1891 in the Pall Mall
Gazette, Oscar Wilde wrote:

“ A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes
from the fact that the author is what he is. It has nothing to do with the fact that
other people want what they want. Indeed, the moment that an artist takes notice of
what other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist,
and becomes a dull or an amusing craftsman, an honest or a dishonest tradesman.
He has no further claim to be considered as an artist”.

Somerset Maugham wrote:

“I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we
live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the
chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and
the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the
perfect work of art.”

Both Oscar Wilde and Somerset Maugham took care of the work of art. They
were the significant representatives of new aesthetic movement. Their works
expressed the doctrine of Art for Art’s sake clearly