The image of Dorian Gray and the seduction of the reader"To reveal the art and hide the artist is the purpose of art", writes Oscar Wilde in the famous preface of his classic novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. It might seem a little ironic that posterity has always regarded this book more or less as an autobiography. Wilde was surrounded by scandals until his death, mixing the strict Victorian society in which he lived with his homosexual inclination and libertine views. about life. The Picture of Dorian Gray was therefore regarded by many people as "highly immoral" and probably earned the title "classic" years after the author's death. With rarely fewer than two compelling aphorisms per page, it's hard not to find myriads of subtle aphorisms. meanings in the text, which is why I focus only on the main themes that I found interesting. The obsession with aestheticism and beauty runs throughout history in a contradictory way. Oscar Wilde states in the preface: "He who finds ugly meanings in beautiful things is corrupt without being charming. This is a flaw. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are cultured. For these there is hope." that one should not, for example, judge a work of art on moral grounds; the art is only there to be admired aesthetically and you just have to be enchanted by its beauty, not be fooled by a deeper idea behind it. At the same time, he lets his protagonist Dorian Gray suffer punishment for his narcissistic behavior through killing him at the end of the book, giving the reader the opposite message: that beauty is after all nothing to aspire to. Furthermore, Wilde makes Dorian's painting become a symbol of the young man's degeneration, showing the immorality of his life very well through a work of art. It is as if Wilde wanted to tell us that art truly has its important place among people and that beauty seduces the viewer. However it is temporary, dangerous and powerful enough to ruin a man's life. You have to know how to look at beauty in order to love it without succumbing to it. Given that Oscar Wilde was himself a convinced aesthete, this conclusion may appear paradoxical, but it must be said that not much in this book is.