by Oscar Wilde
As regards dress: the true nobility of dress is an important part of education, but there is much in the dress of modern times to discourage us. If it were not for the lovely dressing of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the excellence of Venetian art would never have existed; but there is nothing in the styles of the present to give such models to the artists; I hardly dare suggest what must be the thought of the true sculptor when asked to work out the statue of a modern – his thought must be suicidal. There is nothing more indicative of moral decline than squalor and an indifference to dress: the money spent on modern dress is an extravagant waste.
People should not mar beautiful surroundings by gloomy dress; dress nowadays is altogether too sombre, and we should accustom ourselves to the use of more colour and brightness; there should always be a beautifully arranged composition of well-balanced light and shade. There would be more joy in life if we would accustom ourselves to use all the beautiful colours we can in fashioning our own clothes. The dress of the future, I think, will use drapery to a great extent and will abound with joyous colour.
One should have nothing on one’s dress that has not some meaning or that is not useful; beauty in dress consists in its simplicity – all useless and encumbering bows, flounces, knots, and other such meaningless things so fashionable today are nothing but the foolish inventions of the milliner. All the evil of modern dressing has come from the failure to recognise that the right people to construct our apparel are artists, and not modern milliners, whose chief aim is to swell their bills.
Nothing is beautiful, such as tight corsets, which is destructive of health; all dress follows out the lines of the figure – it should be free to move about in, showing the figure. Anything that disfigures the form or blots out the beauty of the natural lines is ugly, and so a knowledge of anatomy as well as art is necessary in correct dressmaking. If one could fancy the Medicean Venus taken from her pedestal in the Louvre to Mr Worth’s establishment in the Palais Royal to be dressed in modern French millinery, every single beautiful line would be destroyed, and no one would look at her a second time.
Go through a book of costumes, and you will find that when dress was most simple, it was most beautiful: one of the earliest forms is the ancient Greek drapery, which is most simple and so exquisite for your girls, but I must warn you that it is most difficult to design. And then I think we may be pardoned a little enthusiasm over the dress of the time of Charles II, so beautiful, indeed, that in spite of its invention being with the Cavaliers, it was copied by the Puritans. And the dress for the children at that time must not be passed over: it was a very golden age for the little ones; I don’t think that they have ever looked so lovely as they do in the pictures of that time. And the ladies might study the costumes of the old Venetian ladies and pattern after them. If something more modern is desired, the dress of the last century in England was also particularly generous and graceful: it can be found in the style of dress painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds and by Gainsborough; there is nothing bizarre about it, and it is full of harmony and beauty. There should be nothing outre in dress; a man or woman of taste can so conform their dress that it will not merit disapproval but receive the praise of those who have an artistic eye.
Of all ugly things, nothing can exceed in ugliness artificial flowers, which, I am sure, none of you wear; and it is better not to wear any modern jewellery, since none of the designs are good. It is difficult to speak of the modern bonnet – there are no limits to indignation, but there are limits to language – for the modern bonnet is an irrational monstrosity not affording the wearer the slightest use: it does not keep the sun off in summer nor the rain off in winter. The large hat of the last century was more sensible and useful, and nothing is more graceful in the world than a broad-brimmed hat. We have lost the art of draping the human form and have even discarded the graceful cloak with its deep folds for the unnatural and ungraceful jacket; the cloak, on the other hand, is always graceful, and is the simplest and most beautiful drapery ever devised.
The uncomfortable character of our present dress is shown by our willingness to adopt a new fashion every three months. All really beautiful dress is durable too, and if the beautiful is obtained, economy would be secured also. In these days, when we have suffered so dreadfully from the incursions of the modern milliners, we hear ladies boast that they do not wear a dress more than once; in the old days, when the dresses were decorated with beautiful designs and worked with exquisite embroidery, ladies rather took a pride in bringing out the garment and wearing it many times, and handing it down to their daughters, as something precious and beautiful for them to wear – a process which I think would be quite appreciated by modern husbands and fathers when called upon to settle the bills.
And how shall men dress? Men say they don’t particularly care how they dress, and that it is little matter. I am bound to reply that I don’t believe them and don’t think that you do either. They dress in black and sober greys and browns because that is the custom, and their dress is not beautiful, either, in design, being careless and without harmony of style. In all my journeys through the country, the only well-dressed men I have seen in America were the miners of the Rocky Mountains; they wore a wide-brimmed hat which shaded their faces from the sun and protected them from the rain, and their flowing cloak, which is by far the most beautiful piece of drapery ever invented, may well be dwelt upon with admiration. Their high boots too were sensible and practical. These miners dressed for comfort and of course attained the beautiful. As I looked at them, I could not help thinking with regret of the time when these picturesque miners should have made their fortunes and would go West to assume again all the abomination of modern fashionable attire. Indeed, I made some of them promise that when they again appeared in the more crowded scenes of Eastern civilisation, they would still continue to wear their lovely costume, but I don’t believe they will.
The dress of the men of the last century was graceful; the gentlemen might study for their pattern the noble and beautiful attire of George Washington; that brave and great man dressed with taste, as did other American gentlemen of his day. Men should dress more in velvet – grey or brown or black – as it catches the light and shade, while broadcloth is ugly as it does not absorb the light. Trousers become dirty in the street; knee-breeches are more comfortable and convenient – prettier to look at, too, and easier to keep out of the mud; high boots in the streets keep the mud off, but low shoes and silk stockings should be used in the drawing room. Finally, cloaks should be worn instead of coats.
In conclusion, what is the relation of art to morals? It is sometimes said that our art is opposed to good morals; but on the contrary, it fosters morality. Wars and the clash of arms and the meeting of men in battle must be always, but I think that art, by creating a common intellectual atmosphere between all countries might, if it could not overshadow the world with the silvery wings of peace, at least make men such brothers that they would not go out to slay one another for the whim or folly of some king or minister as they do in Europe; for national hatreds are always strongest where culture is lowest. And hence the enormous importance given to all the decorative arts in our English renaissance; we want children to grow up in England in the simple atmosphere of all fair things; the refining influence of art, begun in childhood, will be of the highest value to all of us in teaching our children to love what is beautiful and good, and hate what is evil and ugly. Then when a child grows up he learns that industrious we must be, but industry without art is simply barbarism.
For there never was an age that so much needed the spiritual ministry of art as the present. Today more than ever the artist and a love of the beautiful are needed to temper and counteract the sordid materialism of the age. In an age when science has undertaken to declaim against the soul and spiritual nature of man, and when commerce is ruining beautiful rivers and magnificent woodlands and the glorious skies in its greed for gain, the artist comes forward as a priest and prophet of nature to pr
otest, and even to work against the prostitution or the perversion of what is lofty and noble in humanity and beautiful in the physical world, and his religion in its benefits to mankind is as broad and shining as the sun. There are grand truths and beauty in the Catholic pictorial art, and in the Protestant religious music, which no sectarian prejudices and no narrow-minded bigotry can keep the world from acknowledging and admiring. I urge you all not to become discouraged because ridicule is thrown upon those who have the boldness to run counter to popular prejudice; in time the true aesthetic principles will prevail. Throughout the world, in all times and in all ages, there have been those who have had the courage to advocate opinions that were for the time abhorred by the public. But if those who hold those opinions have the courage to maintain and defend them, it is absolutely certain that in the end the truth will prevail.
And so let it be for you to create an art that is made with the hands of the people, for the joy of the people too, an art that will be a democratic art, entering into the houses of the people, making beautiful the simplest vessels they contain, for there is nothing in common life too mean, in common things too trivial, to be ennobled by your touch, nothing in life that art cannot raise and sanctify.
THE DECORATIVE ARTS
In my lecture tonight I do not wish to give you any abstract definition of beauty; you can get along very well without philosophy if you surround yourselves with beautiful things; but I wish to tell you of what we have done and are doing in England to search out those men and women who have knowledge and power of design, of the schools of art provided for them, and the noble use we are making of art in the improvement of the handicraft of our country. I believe that every city produces every year a certain amount of artistic knowledge and artistic intellect, and it is our purpose to develop that intellect and use it for the creation of beautiful things.
Few people will deny that they are doing injury to themselves and their children by living outside the beauty of life, which we call art, for art is no mere accident of existence which men may take or leave, but a very necessity of human life, if we are to live as nature intended us to live, that is, unless we are content to be something less than men.
Now, one of the first questions you will ask me is, ‘what art should we devote ourselves to in this country?’ It seems to me that what you want most here is not that higher order of imaginative art of the poet and the painter, because they will take care of themselves, nothing will make or mar them, but there is an art that you can make or mar, and that is decorative art, the art that will hallow the vessels of everyday use, exerting its influence in the simplest and humblest of homes. If you develop art culture by beautifying the things around you, you may be certain that other arts will follow in the course of time. The art I speak of will be a democratic art made by the hands of the people and for the benefit of the people, for the real basis of all art is to be found in the application of the beautiful in things common to all and in the cultivation and development of this among the artisans of the day.
And what is the meaning of the term ‘decorative art?’ In the first place, it means the value the workman places on his work, it is the pleasure that he must take in making a beautiful thing. To progress in the decorative arts, to make chaste and elegant patterns of carpet or wall paper, even the little wreath of leaf or vine traced around the margin of cups we drink out of, requires more than mere machine work: it requires delicacy of hand, cultivated taste, and nobility of character. For the mark of all good art is not that the thing is done exactly or finely, for machinery may do as much, but that it is worked out with the tender, appealing vitality of the workman’s heart and head.
No one takes any pleasure in doing bad or fraudulent work; the craving for the artistic finds a place in every heart, and the fair decorations with which we love to surround ourselves, and which we call art, bear a deeper, holier meaning that the mere money value of the workmanship, a meaning that places them far above the usual price, since in them we recognize those heart-throbs of joy, and keen thrills of intellectual pleasure known only to the maker of beautiful things. And so wherever good work and good decoration is found, it is a certain sign that the workman has laboured not only with his hands, but with his heart and his head also.
But one cannot get good work done unless the handicraftsman is furnished with rational and beautiful designs; if you have commonplace design, you must have commonplace work, and if you have commonplace work, you must have commonplace workmen; but really good design will produce thoroughly good workmen whose work is beautiful at the moment and for all time. Give the workman noble designs, dignify and ennoble his work, and through this, his life. I suppose that the poet will sing or the artist will paint regardless whether the world praises or blames; he has his own world and is independent of his fellow men, but the ordinary handicraftsman is almost entirely dependent upon your pleasure and opinion and upon the influences which surround him for his knowledge of form and colour. And so it is of the utmost importance that he be supplied with the noble productions of original minds so that he may acquire that artistic temperament without which there is no creation of art, there is no understanding of art, there is not even an understanding of life.
How necessary, then, when the artist and the poet have supplied the handicraftsman with beautiful designs, thoughts, and ideas, that in working them out he should be honoured with a loving encouragement and satisfied with fair surroundings. For the great difficulty that stands in the way of your artistic development is not a lack of interest in art, nor a lack of love for art, but that you do not honour the handicraftsman sufficiently, and do not recognize him as you should; all art must begin with the handicraftsman, and you must reinstate him into his rightful position. Until you do art will be confined to the few, for if art is not a luxury for the rich and idle, then it should be made beautiful for us to appear in the beautification of our houses. Nor will you honour the handicraftsman sufficiently until you can see that there is no nobler profession for your son to learn than the creation of the beautiful; we must be prepared to give to these crafts the best of our young men and young women, and when you have noble designs, you will attract these men and women of real refinement and knowledge to work for you.
You ask me to name the most practical advance in art in the last five years in England? It is this: of the young men with me at Oxford, men of position, taste, and high mental culture, one is now designing furniture, a second is working metal, a third is trying to revive the lost art of tapestry-making, and so on. Indeed, such progress has been made in England during the last five years in all branches of the decorative arts that I expect to see her take her place once again as the foremost of all nations in the cultivation and development of art and the encouragement of those who love to perpetuate in their handiwork the beauties about them.
But we are told that this is a practical age, and in the rush of business men have no time to think of delicate ornaments, that in the rush to catch a train a man cannot stop to examine the pattern of the carpet he is stepping over. We are told that if articles in everyday use are only honestly made, we are satisfied if they are not ornamental.
Indeed, honesty of work is essential to progress in a practical age, yet is this an honest age? This century has been marked by more dishonest workmanship and has produced more rubbish than any that preceded it. Every householder who furnishes a new residence discovers this in his carpets, which are badly designed, badly woven and dyed with cheap aniline dyes, and which become faded and shabby with one summer’s sun; furniture is machine-made, and much of it is not even honestly joined, but simply glued, and becomes split and twisted in less than five years’ time. The wonder is that we do not live out-of-doors. We must not be deceived by the attempt to draw the fine line of distinction between what is beautiful and what is useful. Utility is always on the side of the beautifully decorated article and the skill of the workman.
There is one article of furniture which has confronted me whereve
r I have gone on this continent, and that for absolutely horrid ugliness surpasses anything I have seen—the cast-iron American stove. If it had been left in its natural ugliness it might be endured as a necessary nuisance, like a dull relation or a rainy day, but manufacturers persist in decorating it with wreaths of black-leaded and grimy roses at the base and surmounting it with a dismal funereal urn—or, where they are more extravagant than usual, with two.
Thus it is that the dishonesty of the age has coined the most perfectly dreadful word at present forming our language—‘second-hand’—the meaning of which is that the moment you begin to use anything it begins to decrease in value until after six months it is worth nothing. I hope that the word will fall into such complete disuse that when philologists in the future try to discover what it means they shall not be able.
For it must always be remembered that what is well and carefully made by an honest workman after a rational design increases in beauty and value as the years go on, like the walls of Gothic cathedrals, which contain old marbles still as beautiful as when the chisels of the old workmen first rang upon them, carved woods as lovely and durable as when the plane first smoothed their sides, and they are now more firmly set in the earth and more beautiful than when first built. And the old furniture brought over from Europe or made by the Pilgrims two hundred years ago, and which I saw in New England, is just as strong and as beautiful today as it was on the day it came from the hands of its artificers. Simple of design, yet honestly made, it does not depreciate in value as does our modern furniture, and you have the satisfaction of knowing that your grandparents used that furniture before you, and your grandchildren will use it after you are gone. So always will good work thrive, and so should it. If this term ‘second-hand’ is to be understood as it now is, then have your handicrafts fallen indeed.
