tricolor Only Art Students. Only fine. Almafuerte 
Next text corresponds to a talk given by Oscar Wilde in 1883, to students of art from the Royal Academy in Westminster, London. It is very interesting. Yes, I know. I continued intellectual. And why?
...
In this text, Wilde addresses the complicated issue of artistic creation to be made clear: not want to give you any philosophy of beauty (as I want tonight is to find out how we can create art, not how we talk about it) .
In the center of this disquisition are present the following question: Is the artist is born, or the artist is?
may well studied both art history and the techniques to use in a variety of different artistic disciplines, but ... Do you keep that relationship with the artist in you?
It is clear that an artist needs to refine and develop skills that will help to raise their capacity create art, but such knowledge does not necessarily lead to creativity or, rather, the conformation of the artist. There may be, then, who handles excellently techniques, say, painting, not necessarily that such person may be considered an artist .
On this ancient and eternal controversy turns the talk of Oscar Wilde.
The text, interesting in itself, requires our recreation and participation, ie should not be approached in a passive manner.
Chantal López y Omar Cortés
Art Students
1
The conference that I have the honor to deliver to you this night I do not give you any abstract definition of beauty. Because we work in the art can not accept any theory of beauty in exchange for beauty itself, and thus, far from trying to isolate it in a formula addressed to the intellect, we try, instead, to materialize in a way that provides joy the soul through the senses. We create and do not define it. The definition should continue to completion: the work should not fit the definition.
Nothing is actually more dangerous for the young artist that any conception of ideal beauty, is constantly dragged by her prettiness toward either a faint or to a dead abstraction; why you should not, to achieve the ideal, strip it of its vitality, You should find it in life and re-create it in art.
While on the one hand, I do not give you any philosophy of beauty (for what I want tonight is to find out how we can create art and not how we talk about it), on the other hand, I have no intention of treating a subject like the history of English art .
And to begin, this expression English art is an expression devoid of meaning. Might as well talk of English mathematics . Art is the science of beauty, and mathematics is the science of truth there is no national school of the one or the other. In fact, a school National is simply a provincial school. There is no art school. There are only artists, and that's it.
As to the Histories of Art, no value for you, unless you seek the ostentatious oblivion of an art teacher. It would not be for you in the least helpful to know the time of Perugino or know the birthplace of Salvador Rosa; everything you ought to learn the art is to recognize whether a painting is good or bad just by looking. As the time of the artist, every good work looks perfectly modern: a piece Greek sculpture, a portrait Velázquez, are always modern, even in our time. And as to the nationality of the artist, art is not national but universal. Regarding archeology, in order, completely handwork: archeology science is simply to find an excuse for bad art, is the rock against which the crash and wrecked many young artists, is the sum of never returns to an artist, whether old or young. Or, if returned, is so covered with the dust of the years, that is completely unrecognizable as an artist, and has to hide for the rest of his days under the cap of a teacher or as simple illustrator of ancient history. You can understand the lack of archaeological value in art by the mere fact of its popularity. Popularity is the crown of laurel which the world spins for bad art. Everything popular is wrong.
2
Since I have no intention, therefore, speak of the philosophy of beauty or art history, ask me what topic I will speak. The theme of my speech tonight is: How is an artist and what is an artist, what are the achievements of the artist and his environment, what education should have the artist and what the qualities of a good piece of art.
discusses relations between the artist and his environment, word by which I mean the century and the country where he was born. All good art, as I said, it has nothing to do with a century in particular, the conditions that produce these qualities are different. And what I think you should do is to totally your century, to separate you all about it; remember that if you are an artist faithfully, you will not be the spokesman for a century, but the owner of eternity ; that all art is based on a simple principle and that temporal considerations are no principles whatsoever, and I advise those who believe a representational art of the present century produzcáis you advise your children to art, when you have, find last fashion. But I will say that our time is a time inartistic, and that the artist suffers greatly in this century
course. I'll be the first to not be denied. But remember that there has never been old artistic or artistic people from the beginning of the world. The artist has been and will always be, a nice exception. No golden age art, only artists who have produced what is more golden than gold.
How! -tell me- And the Greeks, were not an artistic people?
Well, the Greeks were not, certainly, but perhaps you refer to the Athenians, the citizens of a city of a thousand.
Do you think they were an artistic people? Prove, even at the time of its highest development during the latter part of the V century BC, when they were the greatest poets and the greatest artists of the ancient world when the Parthenon rose in full beauty at the request of a Phidias, when the philosopher spoke of the wisdom in the shade of a porch and painted the tragedy unfolded in perfection of the spectacle and pathos , among the marbles of the theater. Were an artistic people? Absolutely. What is an artistic people but a people who loves and understands his art artists? The Athenians did not do neither one nor the other.
Phidias How treated? To him we owe the greatest time, not only in the Greek art, but in all art: I mean the introduction of the use of live models.
What would you say if all the English bishops supported by the English people, go down one day in Exeter Hall to the Royal Academy and will take Sir Frederick Leighton in a prison van to Newgate, accusing have allowed to use live models for your sacred paintings?
alzariais you not against barbarism and the Puritanism of such an idea? Is not that explicariais the worst way to honor God is to dishonor the man created in His image and which is the work of their hands; and if you try to paint Christ, the person should be sought greater similarity he has with him, and if you want to paint a virgin, pure girl who knows?
precipitariais you not to set fire to Newgate, if necessary, and proclaim that such a thing without precedent in history? Unprecedented! Well, that's exactly what they did the Athenians.
In the room of the Parthenon Marbles in the British Museum , you will see a marble resting on the wall. At the top there are two characters: a man whose face is half hidden, and another that shows the divine features of Pericles. Having done that, having entered into a bas-relief taken from the sacred history of Greece, the image of the great statesman who ruled Athens in the time, Pheidias was imprisoned, and there in the common cell of Athens, died artist most of the art world.
Do you think it was this an exceptional case? The sign of a Philistine age is the cry of immorality against art, and this cry was launched by the Athenian people against all the great poets and great thinkers of his time: Aeschylus, Euripides, Socrates. Same happened in Florence in the thirteenth century. The beautiful works are due to guilds or councils and not the people. From the day that guilds lost their power and the people replaced them, the beauty and honesty of the finished work.
So never speak not an artistic people: such a thing never existed.
3
Perhaps
tell me that outward beauty of the world has almost completely away from us, that the artist no longer lives in the midst of the wonderful atmosphere, in former times was the natural inheritance of everyone, and that art is very difficult in our city ugly, where, when you go to your work in the morning or when you turn it at night, you have to cross streets more foolish architecture the world has ever seen; architecture which all Greek form this adorable desecrated and dishonored, reducing three-quarters of London to be nothing more than a few square blocks of the vilest proportions so elongated that are ugly and as poor as pretentious, with the hall door always wrong color and size windows also inadequate, and where, even when you are tired of looking at houses and you turn into the street itself, only pipe hats you can see, men - sandwiches , scarlet mailboxes, and that the risk of being crushed by a bus emerald green.
Is not art difficult - - tell me in such an environment? Obviously, it is, but art was never, indeed, easy. Yourselves not you would want it to be easy, and also not to be worth more than what the world calls impossible.
However, you will wait to answer you with a paradox. What are the artist's relationships with the outside world, and what is the result for you is the loss of a great atmosphere? This is one of the most important issues of modern art, there is no point on which both Ruskin and insist on the decadence of art caused by the decay of beautiful things, and when the artist can not nurture their look of beauty, beauty away from their work.
remember one of his lectures, where, after describing the sordid aspect of a large English town, we drew the picture of what was formerly artistic environment.
- Think, "he said with gallants and colorful phrases, whose beauty I can only dimly reflect, think of the table itself was offered to an artist of the Gothic school of Pisa, Nicolo Pisano, or any of his disciples, during his afternoon walk:
On each side of a river clear up see a row of dazzling palaces, numerous arches and pillars, inlaid with red porphyry and ophite, along the quays before their gates, riding groups of knights, nobles over his face and height, with shining armor and helmet, horse and man were a maze of unique colors and blinding light, the purple stripes, silver and floated on the sturdy scarlet members and the hauberk tinkling like waves on rocks at sunset, where, on each side of the river, there were gardens , courtyards and cloisters, long rows of white pillars among wreaths of vines sprouting amid fountains and orange shells, and also along the avenues of the gardens, and under the shade of crimson pomegranates, moving slowly, the most beautiful groups of women who never have been born in Italy (the most beautiful being the most pure and careful), taught in all high knowledge, as in all art kind, in dance, singing, fine wit, high science, high courage and love even higher, at the same time able to delight, to charm and to save the souls of men. Above all this scenery of perfect human life, a pink dome and bell tower, beyond the dome and bell tower, the foothills of the majestic hills, white, olive, above, in the distance, to the north, the most purple of the peaks of the Apennines solemn, clear and steep mountains of Carrara marble peaks stood as rigid flames in the sky of amber, the wide sea itself, its blazing light waste, ranging from plants to the islands Gorgons, and above all This always present, near or far, glimpsed through the leaves of the vine, or imaged with all its train of clouds in the waters of the Arno, or blue chasms approximating the golden hair and glowing cheeks lady and gentleman, that heaven was pure and sacred reality for all men, in those days of naive faith, the abode of spirits indubitable and the Earth was the male, and opened its doors directly by cloud and veils of dew on the solemnity of the eternal world, a heaven in which every cloud that passed was literally the chariot of an angel, and every ray of his night and his morning exhalábase the throne of God. What do you think of this as art school?
4
Behold after dismal and monotonous appearance of any modern city, the dark suits for men and women, naked and meaningless architecture, the environment ugly and colorless. Without a beautiful national life, not only the sculpture, but all the arts, will expire.
regard to the religious sentiment of the end of that passage, I do not need to talk about it. Religion springs from religious feeling, art, artistic feeling, not ever shall obtain from each other. A Unless you have the exact stem, no flower will obtain accurate, and if a man sees the car in a cloud of an angel, painted in a very little like a cloud.
But as for the general idea of \u200b\u200bthe first part of this delightful piece of prose, is it really true that a beautiful environment necessary for the artist? I think not, I'm sure it . In fact, for me, the least artistic thing in our century is not the indifference of the public for beautiful things, but the indifference of the artist called ugly things. Well for the true artist nothing is ugly or beautiful by itself. He has nothing to do with the facts of the object, but only with their appearance, and this is a matter of light and shade, position and values.
The appearance is really a matter simply effects, and effects of nature is what ought to be engaged, not the actual conditions of the object. What you, painters, ye to paint things not as they are, but as they are not.
No object, ugly words, in certain conditions of light or shade, or in the proximity of other objects, does not look beautiful, there is no object, which is beautiful, that certain conditions does not seem ugly. I believe that every twenty-four hours what is beautiful and it looks ugly is ugly looks nice for once.
And the trivial nature of most of our English painting I think due to the fact that many of our young artists look only what might be called the beauty and made , whereas you exist as artists, not to copy beauty but to create it in your art, to achieve and look at nature.
What would you say to a playwright who did not intervene but virtuous people as characters in his works? Do not forget you would think that half of life? Well : the young artist paints beautiful things that only half of the world forgets.
not expect life to be picturesque, but to try and see for yourself in life for picturesque. These conditions can create them in your study, because they are only light conditions. You must wait, look for them, choose them, in nature, and if you wait and seek, and they will come.
In Gower Street you can see, at night, a colorful box labeled, in the Seine can see picturesque policemen . Venice itself is not always beautiful, nor France.
Paint what you see is a good rule in art, but see what is worth painting, the better. Look life in pictorial terms. It is better to live in a city variable temperature in a city surrounded by beautiful landscape.
Now that we've seen what makes the artist and what it does, what is the artist? A man who lives among us, which brings together in himself all the qualities of the noblest art, whose works are a delight for all time and is, in turn, a teacher of all time. This man is Mr. Whistler.
5
But, you say, modern dress, here are wrong. If you can not paint black cloth, you would not have been painted silk waistcoats. A suit is preferable ugly art, is a If no object vision.
What is a painting? First of all, a picture is not only a magnificently colored surface, with no other significance or other spiritual message for you than an exquisite fragment of Venetian glass or a blue brick wall of Damascus. It is, above all, a purely decorative thing that pleases one to see.
All archaeological painting that makes you say How curious! , all sentimental painting that makes you say How sad! , all historical painting that makes you say: What interesting! , any paint that you will not immediately produce artistic enjoyment can make you cry How beautiful! is a bad painting.
We never know what an artist will do. Naturally. The artist is not a specialist. All these classifications in animals, landscapes, painters of English cattle from a Scottish mist, painters of horse racing, painters bull-terriers, all that is superficial. If a man is an artist, can paint everything.
The object of art is to press the rope more and more divine secret that produces music in our soul; and the color is, in fact, by itself, a mystical about things, and resembles a sort of Sentinel.
then perhaps you will believe that I am advocating simply for the art. No. While there is no sign of art, the picture is not finished. When a painting is finished? When all traces of work and the means used to achieve the result, have disappeared.
In the case of artisans (The weaver, the potter, the blacksmith), is in his hands the print of his, but not so with the artist.
Art should have no other feeling than its beauty, no other technique that you can watch. It should be said of a table that is not well painted , but is not painted .
What is the difference between decorative art and painting in particular? Decorative art shows its material, it overrides the imaginative art. The tapestry shows its threads as part its beauty, a box voids your canvas, do not let him see anything. China highlights its lead glazed watercolor paper masks.
A picture has no more significance than their beauty or other message that his joy. This first truth in art must not lose sight of. A picture is a purely decorative thing.
