Oscar Wilde's The Critic as Artist, or the ability to create, feel and live art.

“Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it” Van Gogh.¹

About art, criticism, literature; every element connected to creation and the human soul has been written and will be written eternally without ever reaching a consensus. And it is childish, is unreal, to expect that as humans we can have an idea regarding art that everyone can agree on. Art comes from the soul, art is passion, madness, desire, pain; deep and irrational emotions that lead to the creation of something magnificent, something that transcends.

Oscar Wilde proposes us to think about the act of creation.² Are we all capable of creating something beautiful? at least to understand it? to criticize it? The artist's closeness to his work is intimate, passionate, loving, while the critic approaches it with devastating, studious, distant eyes. Regarding artists, it can be said that inspiration and creation are unique, they belong only to them, leaving out both the public and the critic, who lack the ability to create, limited to observing and feeling. But although Wilde's text proposes quite interesting ideas and separates both groups in a radical way, we as readers are left to ask ourselves if the fact of feeling, of marveling and being moved to the depths in front of a work of art, any kind of art, is not really a valuable act, although not creative, revolutionary.

But this applies to the respectful viewer, to the person who consumes art like air, who lives and suffers for it. The story for the critic may be different, and Wilde puts it that way. Because the truth is, art should not be subject to the opinion of a privileged circle, it should not please anyone other than the artist, art should be something moving, something raw that moves the observer to tears. Let's think about The Paris Salon in the 19th century, about the great and unique artists who were constantly rejected and humiliated by the dominant circle of critics, connoisseurs. Would there be anyone today with the courage to reject Van Gogh's 'The Sunflowers' as a masterpiece? 'Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe' by Manet? At the time, the Salón des Refusés became the answer to the question that will continue to mortify us eternally: who can say what is art and what is not? And who grants them that authority?

Édouard Manet - Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, detail.

Despite this, Wilde does not forget a pillar of civilization and art, fundamental when thinking about creation and sensitivity to beauty: Greece. The critic with an aesthetic sense, with a real sense of beauty, existed and in fact, as Wilde mentions in his text, is the father and founder of everything that is redeemable in today's society. The Greek critic mind, the Greek spirit was the last great thought and civilization that had a coordinated artistic, mental and aesthetic sense, and as Virginia Woolf said, there will never again be a society capable of creating and thinking like the Greek one.³

Wilde mentions how the ancient Greek mind and culture understood art and creation not as a distant element, much less limited to delight, for them art, criticism, thought itself, were fundamental, pillars of their entire society.

“Whatever, in fact, is modern in our life we owe to the Greeks.  Whatever is an anachronism is due to mediævalism.  It is the Greeks who have given us the whole system of art-criticism, and how fine their critical instinct was, may be seen from the fact that the material they criticised with most care was, as I have already said, language.”

Reenactment of 1890 of the Theatre of Dionysus - in Athenes, Ancient Greece.

He speaks of the Greek critic as a pillar of posterity, as a creator and defender of passions that have transcended time. Although in his text he defends that the critic has the ability to create new art from what he judges, to create sensations, this can be considered a truth yes, but with respect to the critic of the past, that of ancient Athens, never about that of modernity.

“The critic will certainly be an interpreter, but he will not treat art as a riddling Sphinx, whose shallow secret may be guessed and revealed by one whose feet are wounded and who knows not his name. Rather, he will look upon Art as a goddess whose mystery it is his province de ella to intensify, and whose majesty de ella his privilege de ella to make more marvelous in the eyes of men”

The author's way of describing genius and his creative capacity is moving but we cannot agree to link it to the contemporary or modern critic. Yes, art and the criticism that arises from it should always create intense and majestic feelings, inviting us to rethink ourselves as a society and individuals, but this is far from being a reality. Art is capable of purifying the human soul, of bringing the individual closer to a collective feeling of empathy, beauty, passion and lament; but the critic and his work are far from inviting an emotional catharsis, far from creating and understanding the beauty of the sublime. When Wilde says: 'he who carries within him the dreams, ideas and feelings of infinite generations, to whom no form of thought is unknown, nor any emotion obscured' although he speaks of the critic, it is a more appropriate description for the artist, the creator; or for the ancient critic, that Athenian with real soul and paideia.

Perhaps it can be excused and understood that Wilde speaks of the critic with this passion, this utopian ideal, because he belonged to a different, romantic era. Because he himself was a rebellious dreamer who sought to break paradigms and was condemned along with his creation. Now, when he describes the critic as someone who will be able to break racial barriers, launch a universal national feeling, it is sad to realize how far he was from reality, how far society is from reaching this. Art will always be the flag of freedom and creation, of revolution and passions, but the current critic is stuck in those of Paris who broke the hearts of the Impressionists, of those who condemned Sade and his ‘Misfortunes of virtue’, those who classified as inappropriate 'La Colmena' by Cela. All art must be immoral, Wilde tells us, it must shock, remove one from comfort, on this we totally agree.

Art should and always will be something that moves souls, that awakens emotions and new ways of thinking. But the critic has been and maybe will always be a minimal being, limited to seeing with jealous eyes what he cannot even dream of creating.

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"The Greek critic, the Greek spirit was the last great thought and civilization that had a coordinated artistic, mental and aesthetic sense, there will never again be a society capable of creating and thinking like the Greek one."

1. Gogh, Vincent Van. The Complete Letters. Thames & Hudson Ltd, 1979.

2. Wilde, Oscar. Artist as critic: Critical writings. 1970.

3. Woolf, Virginia. Books & Portraits. Amereon Ltd, 1981.