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Post by maysamyounis on May 13, 2016 1:48:41 GMT
This is two question for English cluncool 1- 400 they need to response to this questions and if they can give real life situation relate to those two question.
What is the PREFACE to The picture of Dorian Gray about? What does it tell us about art and society?
Does art express a morality? If so should art be censored?
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Post by graceyichen on May 14, 2016 1:54:22 GMT
The Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray is the author's voice on the purpose of art and the role of critics and artists. After you taught us in cluncool that Oscar Wilde purposely added this preface the second time he tried to publish it after receiving muncool criticism for the book, I understood his point in emphasizing that Art exists to be admired and did not need to be over analyzed by anyone. I think artists have always needed to explain themselves to society, obviously not that they want to but that if they didn't, society would label them as immoral, or weird, or "not an artist". This is because society and artists do not agree upon one thing, the purpose of a piece of art. Society is always trying to dig for the "real meaning", while artists do art for whatever the reason they want, and "To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim" - could also hide their meaning well. Society always wants everyone to be the same, everything to have order.
I think art can express whatever it wants! Mortally included. There is no rule that art has to be moral. I don't think art should be censored. Who holds the right to decide what is moral and what is not?
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Post by melody on May 15, 2016 6:19:37 GMT
I agree with Grace that after Wilde was emphasizing his point that art are existing because they're inspiring and motivating people not because they need to be over evaluated for anyone. Since art is really about the potential message which can be admiring to people, I don't think art is something that can be very objective. Since the PREFACE to The Picture of Dorian Gray was about the author's message what actually critics and artists should do and how to handle their jobs. Even though, the society judge if the art is considered good or bad (mortal or immortal), I don't know if they really brought up every single message the artist is trying to show. Therefore, that's why art is very hard to elaborate and there's always new messages coming out of their piece and it will differ day by day since we have different moods and changing thoughts. As a result, yes, art expresses morality in deed and unless it's a children's book, I don't see the point that art should be censored by the society because it'll show more of the society's wants and what they want to oppress.
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Post by sangjoon on May 15, 2016 7:04:10 GMT
In my personal opinion, I think art should not take of morality. Because if morality regarded importanly in art field, artists cannot express their mind more honestly. There will be lots of fakes in art works to hide their real mind and express in more moral way. At least, i want art to have a freedom.
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Post by Jonathan on May 15, 2016 11:07:58 GMT
The Preface of Dorian Gray is how the author wants to express his piece of "artwork" to the audience. He talks about how an artwork of an author should be interpreted. He talks about how people should not analyze the story too much but just accept it as a "beautiful" piece. The word beautiful is repeated many times to emphasize this fact. Artists do not decide what is right or wrong and they have their own meaning. It doesn't necessarily have to be revealed to the audience. The whole point of an artwork is to send the message to the audience with them knowing or not knowing.
As Wilde said, artists does not put morality in their piece of work. Who are they to decide right or wrong? No one can decided that and that's why we have the government to decide it generally. Censoring art is the same to censor the right to speech. It's similar to the situation in the US with puncooling SOPA (as long as I know it hasn't puncooled?) but with this puncooling, people will have no access to Wikipedia and etc. Everyone has the right to have a say in things and artists can express that say through their piece of art.
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