Aguarelas Finas, Le Corbusier | Maison La Roche, Paris

03 setembro 2020

The Picture of Dorian Gray | Oscar Wilde

In the centre of the room, clamped to on an upright easel, stood the full-lenght portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artist himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years ago caused, at the time, such public excitement, and gave rise to so many strange conjectures. 
(…)
'It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done', said Lord Henry, languidly. 
(…) 
'I don't think I shall send it anywhere,' he answered, tossing his head back in that odd way that used to make his friend laught at him at Oxford. 'No: I won´t send it anywhere. 
(…) 
'I know you will laugh at me,' he replied, but I really can´t exhibit it. I have put too much of myself into it.' 
(…) 
But beauty, real beauty ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. 
(…) 
Oh, I can't explain. When I like people immensely I never tell their names to anyone. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvellous to us. The commonest thing is delightfull if one only hides it. When I leave town now I never tell my people where I am going. If I did, I should lose all my pleasure. 
(…) 
I make a great difference between people. I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. 
(…) 
An artist should create beautifull things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. 
(…) 
Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. 

 in: The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde, Macmillan Collector's Library, London, 2017