One of Oscar Wilde's many views in life included his saying, "Art for art's sake." Wilde was involved in the aestheticism movement, which attempted to establish art as just pieces of beauty and nothing more. Many people of the Victorian Era believed all works of art had a deeper meaning and purpose other than for pleasure, but Wilde worked to disprove this idea. Through the three main characters in The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde expressed his views on art in very different ways.
Basil Hallward, an artist, supported the aestheticism movement while talking of his painting of Dorian Gray. Hallward's portrait of Gray was remarkable in the sense that it was beautiful, but it also revealed a little about the painter because of all the emotion he put into his work. Hallward did not want to sell the painting because he felt as if he was selling himself too. He said, "An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstracts sense of beauty" (12). Hallward's tone reflected his disappointment of the Victorian Era, and he had grown tired of people who tried to make conjectures about his life from his paintings, rather than just accept the beauty of them. Hallward was careful not to showcase his painting because he was fearful of what people would assume about him. Wilde spoke through Hallward by expressing his disgust in the Victorian Era's lack of appreciation for the beauty of his work/art.
Another main character, Lord Henry Wotton described the effect (or lack thereof) of art on a person. During Wilde's life, people often blamed art for the affect it had on them. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Gray blamed a book that Wotton had given him as a present for the many evil deeds he committed. Wotton said to Gray, "Art has no influence upon action.
