“All critics want the good of the art! By the way, the artist has no purpose and he is never asked for his opinion: his work is explained and modified without him, by those that had nothing to do with its creation – but upon whom God bestowed the knowledge that was refused to the author!”
(James Abbott McNeil Whistler, The 10 o’clock conference)
Sounds familiar? How many times you have heard being said about theatre critics that they are ill documented, that they create confusions and misinform the public, make personal or just formal reviews and that they are useless, not being able to coherently present their own message and not even close the one of the artist (may he be an actor, director, scenic designer or playwright). I have heard many times this kind of implacable verdicts, except the cases in which the reviews were positive and turned the critic reviewer, all of a sudden, into the guardians of the artistic common sense and into people on high moral grounds that save the art from mediocrity and degradation.
And it is an absolutely normal situation, because art involves passion and absolute belief, and not moderation and cautiousness; when an artist feels that the meaning of his creation is deformed by a theorist, it is natural to react in a scathing manner, to defend his side of the truth. As natural as would be a reaction from the critics, just as passionate and justified, because they are also creators and their opera has its own meaning different from the critical interpretation of the opera.
In 1890, The Nineteenth Century magazine published episodically, in its July and September editions, the dialog called “The True function and value of critic: with some observations on the importance of doing nothing” belonging to Mister Oscar Wilde. The title under which the essay is known today, “The critic as an artist” (published in the “The Fall of Lies” by Polirom in 2000 with the same title), was received the year to come when it was republished in the essay volume, (which also included “The truth of masks“, “The fall of lies“, “Quill pen, pencil and poison“) in a literary revised form. It was written, in a way, as a response to Whistler’s attacks against all those who did not share his vision regarding art, so that one of the essay’s characters – Ernest, can be interpreted as a literary version of the pre-Raphaelite egocentric painter, parodied by Wilde in his tale “The phenomenal Rocket“.
Oscar Wilde managed through his temperamental chronicles (dramatic, literary, vestimentary, regarding interior design or art) to transform the analysis of an opera into something worth analysing too and in the dialog-like treated essay “The critic as an artist“, through Gilbert, a British aristocrat, ready to disregard all the conventions for the sake of an artistic effect, he offers a theoretical point about the importance of critique in creation and of the creation in critique.
The famous lawsuit between James Whistler and the aesthetician John Ruskin, known by the media of that time as the conflict between art and art critique or in other words “Nocturnal sight in yellow and gold” vs. “The bucket of paint thrown in front of the public” was the pretext that allowed Oscar Wilde to show his affinity to the critical theories of the impressionist aesthetics, theories that look upon art critique not as an act of investigation or archaeological discovery of the sources of inspiration for a certain opera, but as an autonomous creation, the opera being just a “starting point for a new creation”. That because the meaning of creation lies “at least as much in the soul of the beholder, as much as in the soul of the creator”.
Art is meant for the artistic temperament that can not be educated and chiselled except by coming in contact with the best operas. Only thus does it become a form of correct judgement and not through lining up to certain schools of critical thinking or through adopting predefined patterns of analysis, on which you can lay with a self called and illusory objectivity generated by a limited perspective, any new creation. And so, the first step in aesthetical critique is being aware of your own impressions, because the purpose of critique is not to see the object as it is, (as Matthew Arnold suggested), but rather to see it in accordance to the impressions born by its assimilation.
Just as art is the critique of life, without being subordinated to it, the duty of the critic who speaks about an opera is not to uncover in any way the artist’s intentions, but to record his own impressions towards that creation, to assert his preferences with no purpose whatsoever, but to reveal his artistic temperament, his changes of state and attitude that the contact with a certain opera has brought upon his personality. For Wilde, The Beauty is the only existing thing and it should be the only one talked about, because its meanings are inexhaustible. Thus the critic should create and express the beauty, not to slice through analysis, as if an opera would be an equation with a single undetermined element. Either you like a certain creation from a rational point of view, or you do not like it at all, for Gilbert it is just about the same thing. A critic has no opinions, he has aesthetical attitudes.
“I hope you do not consider critique as some kind of answer to a mathematical equation – said Wilde in 1888 in a letter addressed to W.E. Henley – the more substantial the opera becomes, the more various the interpretations are. I pity the creation upon which all the critics come together in agreement. It is probably a very explicit and shallow material”
That is why a critic cannot be objective, because he reveals himself, the transformations of his soul, setting his impressions about acertain creation upon another artistical support. He multiplies the meanings of an opera; he reclassifies it regarding the transmitted message because he places it in a new relation towards the era he lives in, towards his aesthetical needs, temperament, culture, etc. He is a creator because of his personal style, the way he can create emotion and not of the barren honesty, because the beauty fascinates and not the plausible / reality.
“When man acts he is a puppet. When he describes action, he is a poet”
The creative interpretative critique does not analyze in a scientifically and practical manner an opera, but, with a proper use of language, it builds a new world of emotions and sensations, from this point on it turns the mind into a wonderful instrument. “the critique is the one that, not knowing any interpretation as being definite and refusing to be faithful to the superficial beliefs of any school or any mindset, creates that clear philosophical temperament that loves truth for truth’s sake and the more it loves it, the more it knows it is unreachable”
How can someone that does not know how to do a certain thing actually talk about that thing? – A new Whistlerian preconception: “Only the artists are competent critics”, set apart with grace and ironical refinement by Oscar Wilde. In other words, how can an artist be judged by a simple theorist? According to Gilbert, a truly talented artist, aware of his purpose and of that of his creation, judges beauty only by setting a reference to his own opera: “A truly great artist can not conceive that beauty can be modelled in any other conditions except the ones that he himself has created. The creation uses its whole critical capacity inside its own sphere. It may not be able to use it inside the sphere of other creations.” Only for the aesthetician the art under all of its forms is appealing.
To Oscar Wilde all of these dangerous mental acrobatics between the artist and the critic, between the admirer and the loather, between ambiguity and clearness, are irresistible.
The essay called “The critic as an artist” challenges, intrigues, contradicts and self-contradicts , plays with paradoxes because, isn’t it so: “there is no love without betrayal” and in the end it shines.
Even so, the essay is not looked at as one of the critical works of reference, because the author’s personality managed to cast a shadow over the destiny of his opera. The prejudices that turned him from the charming dandy of Tite Street into the anonymous convict C.3.3 still hovers over posterity, more interested in finding out the truth about his love affairs than the artistic truth that he dedicated himself to.
Maybe his essays do not have fixed method or structure, but his stylisations and poetical images he uses have an extraordinary strength. Oscar Wilde manages to persuade you to believe even in those things that not even he seems to believe into. Because he can and because he deserves that.
Translated by Ramona Grama, MTTLC, 2nd year
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