The Decay of Lying

“In point of fact what is interesting about people in good society—and M. Bourget rarely moves out of the Faubourg St. Germain, except to come to London,—is the mask that each one of them wears, not the reality that lies behind the mask. It is a humiliating confession, but we are all of us made out of the same stuff.”

Wilde makes the point that reality is not a suitable subject for art because it is banal and repetitive. What is instead worthy of artistic representation is the “mask” or the lies one uses to create a persona for others. The reality of a person’s day-to-day is suggested to be far too dull to be an artistic subject. Vivian argues that a façade is more alluring than the truth of someone’s thoughts and actions.

“The public imagine that, because they are interested in their immediate surroundings, Art should be interested in them also, and should take them as her subject-matter. But the mere fact that they are interested in these things makes them unsuitable subjects for Art. The only beautiful things, as somebody once said, are the things that do not concern us. As long as a thing is useful or necessary to us, or affects us in any way, either for pain or for pleasure, or appeals strongly to our sympathies, or is a vital part of the environment in which we live, it is outside the proper sphere of art. To art’s subject-matter we should be more or less indifferent.”

Wilde discredits the basis of Realism by arguing that true art must necessarily be detached from everyday concerns and realities. Art is an ideal and therefore cannot be lowered or tainted by influence from the imperfections of life. This supports the tenet of Art for Art’s Sake.

“Believe me, my dear Cyril, modernity of form and modernity of subject-matter are entirely and absolutely wrong. We have mistaken the common livery of the age for the vesture of the Muses, and spend our days in the sordid streets and hideous suburbs of our vile cities when we should be out on the hillside with Apollo.”

Wilde is fiercely critical of the realist approach to literature which takes real-life characters and situations to highlight the social ills of the time. This approach produces “bad” art and imitations. Art as an Inventive Force is a prominent theme throughout the dialogue—if it is directly based in truth instead of being independently unique, it is not worthy art.

“When Art surrenders her imaginative medium she surrenders everything.”

Art is personified as a great creator who destroys herself if she renounces her imagination. Imagination here reflects Wilde’s argument of Art as an Inventive Force and Lying as a Necessary Creative Act, with lying being constructed in the essay as an inherent exercise of the imagination.

“CYRIL: I can quite understand your objection to art being treated as a

mirror. You think it would reduce genius to the position of a

cracked looking-glass. But you don’t mean to say that you

seriously believe that Life imitates Art, that Life in fact is the

mirror, and Art the reality?

VIVIAN: Certainly I do. Paradox though it may seem—and

paradoxes are always dangerous things —it is none the less true

that Life imitates art far more than Art imitates life.”

Wilde claims that great art creates structures and types that people then seek out in real life. Art provides a vision of the world that those who experience it recognize and draw from in their interpretations of the world around them. In this way, Art is an Inventive Force that actively shapes our perceptions.

“For what is Nature? Nature is no great mother who has borne us. She is our creation. It is in our brain that she quickens to life. Things are because we see them, and what we see, and how we see it, depends on the Arts that have influenced us. To look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing. One does not see anything until one sees its beauty. Then, and then only, does it come into existence.”

Wilde does not consider life in itself to be beautiful; rather, life is made beautiful through the intervention of art. The perceptions we have of life are informed by the art we are exposed to. Thus, Vivian (and Wilde) believes life imitates art and rejects the idea that art imitates life.

“Art never expresses anything but itself.”

Per the tenet of Art for Art’s Sake, art should not seek to represent life or be influenced by the various aspects that condition it. Artistic works exist within a separate sphere dedicated to beauty and perfection, in contrast to the messiness and imperfections of life.

“Remote from reality, and with her eyes turned away from the shadows of the cave, Art reveals her own perfection, and the wondering crowd that watches the opening of the marvellous, many-petalled rose fancies that it is its own history that is being told to it, its own spirit that is finding expression in a new form. But it is not so. The highest art rejects the burden of the human spirit, and gains more from a new medium or a fresh material than she does from any enthusiasm for art, or from any lofty passion, or from any great awakening of the human consciousness. She develops purely on her own lines. She is not symbolic of any age. It is the ages that are her symbols.”

Within the aestheticist framework, true art creates its own reality that is separate from regular life, and life then imitates what is seen in art. Art does not copy from life but instead invents beauty that comes to define the way people see.

“Now, do you really imagine that the Japanese people, as they are presented to us in art, have any existence? If you do, you have never understood Japanese art at all. The Japanese people are the deliberate self-conscious creation of certain individual artists. If you set a picture by Hokusai, or Hokkei, or any of the great native painters, beside a real Japanese gentleman or lady, you will see that there is not the slightest resemblance between them. The actual people who live in Japan are not unlike the general run of English people; that is to say, they are extremely commonplace, and have nothing curious or extraordinary about them. In fact the whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people.”

Wilde uses this example of a nation of people to illustrate Art as an Inventive Force. Wilde alludes to some of the most famed Japanese artists, whose works came to represent and define the public’s image of Japan and Japanese art. Per Wilde’s argument, these artists’ works are not inherently Japanese, and their subjects do not derive from Japanese people; rather, the artworks are so stylistically coherent and original that they have come to define people’s conceptions of Japan and Japanese art.

“It is style that makes us believe in a thing—nothing but style. Most of our modern portrait painters are doomed to absolute oblivion. They never paint what they see. They paint what the public sees, and the public never sees anything.”

The premise of Wilde’s essay is that true art is being replaced because Lying as a Necessary Creative Act is being rejected in favor of a societal insistence on “fact.” Representing facts results in artworks that are derivative copies of regular life. Wilde claims that the “public never sees anything” because the public is trained by art to see—that is, public perceptions are informed by art.

“All bad art comes from returning to Life and Nature, and elevating them into ideals. Life and Nature may sometimes be used as part of Art’s rough material, but before they are of any real service to art they must be translated into artistic conventions. The moment Art surrenders its imaginative medium it surrenders everything.”

Art must be creative and follow its own rules rather than the influences of reality. Relying on life imprisons art within a cycle of imitation and takes away its capacity for timelessness—a key element of “great art.”

“It is, to have the pleasure of quoting myself, exactly because Hecuba is nothing to us that her sorrows are so suitable a motive for a tragedy.”

Wilde alludes to Hecuba, a figure from Greek mythology whose story is also told in the Iliad. Art should not exist within the confines of real human experiences but rather should be elevated to a separate sphere so as to become universal and timeless.

“The third doctrine is that Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life. This results not merely from Life’s imitative instinct, but from the fact that the self-conscious aim of Life is to find expression, and that Art offers it certain beautiful forms through which it may realize that energy.”

Wilde argues that life is inherently imitative, to the point that people imitate what they see and read sometimes without even being aware that their actions are influenced by frameworks established in art. Art is therefore a channel through which people can express their feelings and experiences.