William Andrews Clark Lecture on Oscar Wilde
“Oscar Wilde and the Visual Arts”
Given by Nicholas Frankel, Virginia Commonwealth University
Tuesday, March 31, 2015, 4:00 p.m.
Oscar Wilde had much to say about the visual and decorative arts. His relationships with leading figures in the art world—notably James Whistler, Aubrey Beardsley, Edward Burne-Jones, and Charles Ricketts, as well as the critics John Ruskin, Walter Pater, and John Symonds—were integral to his ideas, and he was himself the subject for several important visual artworks, including the Clark Library’s own portrait by R. G. Harper Pennington. For students of literature, Wilde’s direct engagements with art and artists are important chiefly for their effects upon his practice as an imaginative writer. The lecture traces the influence of fine art on Wilde’s poetry, fiction, and criticism, while demonstrating the centrality of the decorative and book arts to his published work. Touched upon are Wilde’s early…
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