Oscar WILDE - Signed autograph aphorism.

Oscar WILDE (1854.1900)

Signed autograph aphorism.

An oblong octavo page. Slnd (U.S. 1882)

Exceptional aphorism from Wilde, quintessence of his spirit dedicated to Art, and concluding sentence of his lectures given in the United States and Canada in 1882, “The English Renaissance of Art”.

We spend our days, each of us, looking for the secret of life.

Well, my friends, the secret of life is in art.

Oscar Wilde.

In all of Wilde's books, murderous epigrams, definitive sentences and implacable aphorisms appear. These thoughts of one of the finest minds of the 19th century are brought together today in dedicated collections, where the reader discovers the fundamental importance of Beauty, Art, and the Spirit.

For Wilde Art and Beauty were a religion; a reason to live: “Beauty is the symbol of symbols. It reveals everything, because it expresses nothing. By showing herself to us, she makes us see the whole world bursting with color” (The critic as artist).

Wilde, invited to give a series of lectures on the theme of Aesthetics and the English Renaissance of Art, arrived in the United States on January 3, 1882, for a tour scheduled for four months. This tour will ultimately span a year, taking him to Canada. This aphorism, quintessence of Wildian thought, summary of his entire life, is in reality the concluding sentence of this cycle of conferences “The English Renaissance of Art” given on American soil.

Playwright, poet, novelist and critic, Oscar Wilde used all literary forms to give worship to Beauty, and to its manifestations: works of Art.

We know the fascination that a certain number of paintings exerted on Wilde, and first and foremost Guido Reni's Saint Sebastian.

Breaking with Aristotelian tradition and classical philosophy, Wilde refutes art as an imitation of life. Art is life, art imitates nature, he insists. And this thought, so clearly expressed in our manuscript, is not just a dandy posture: it is a profound conviction, a profession of faith. Who better than Oscar Wilde knew how to show the living power of a work of art? We all think of the captivating reading of the pages of The Portrait , when the painted and aging image of Dorian Gray becomes marked with the marks of age and vice, only to end up stabbed, slashed with suicidal knife wounds.

The impact of this new thinking will be immense. It is in Marcel Proust that we find the most resounding echo of these words. “The secret of life is in art” says Oscar Wilde. “The supreme truth of life is in art. » tells us the narrator of The Search! “The greatness of true art (…) was to rediscover, to recapture, to make us aware of this reality far from which we live (…) this reality that we would very much risk dying without having known, and which is all simply our life. Real life, life finally discovered and clarified, the only life therefore truly lived, is literature; this life which, in a sense, lives at every moment in all men as well as in the artist. »

This formidable dialogue undoubtedly owes its existence to the common master that was for Wilde and Proust, John Ruskin. Their thinking germinated to nourish the entire 20th century. These few words from Oscar Wilde really set a precedent. They inspired so many followers who, following him, were able to find in Art a reason for living, a fuller and deeper way of understanding the world.

André Suarès wrote in the first pages of Condottiere “ Like everything that matters in life, a beautiful journey is a work of art. ".

Closer still to us, we find another exegesis of these essential words of the British writer : “Making essential to our sight – and who knows to our life – landscapes which until then were non-existent or invisible for us (…) this is the paradox and the fabulous privilege of the artist. So let's not hesitate to say it again: it is nature that imitates art, not the other way around. In the fields surrounding my village, every summer I perceive the disarray, the despair of the sunflowers: are we worthy of Him, they whisper in the breath of the wind, of this Van Gogh who first gave birth to us? (Jacques Lacarrière)