Write a one page response to one of the statements made by Oscar Wilde in the Preface to his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. You will agree/disagree/or both with the statement. Give evidence for your argument. Concrete and relevant evidence.What is your opinion? Write a brief paragraph (4-5 sentences) stating your opinion regarding the following quote:
“Part of the role of the church in the past was—and could and should be again—to foster and sustain lives of beauty and aesthetic meaning at every level, from music making in the village pub to drama in the local primary school, from artists’ and photographers’ workshops to still-life painting classes, from symphony concerts, to driftwood sculptures.
The point is this. The arts are not the pretty but irrelevant bits around the border of reality. They are the highways into the center of a reality which cannot be glimpsed, let alone grasped, any other way. The present world is good, but broken and in any case incomplete; art of all kinds enables us to understand that paradox in its many dimensions.
But the present world is also designed for something which has not yet happened. It is like a violin waiting to be played: beautiful to look at, graceful to hold-and yet if you'd never heard one in the hands of a musician, you wouldn't believe the new dimensions of beauty yet to be revealed. Perhaps art can show something of that, can glimpse the future possibilities pregnant within the present time.”
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