Shaw on the Immorality of Imitating Art
February 16, 2012 12:56pm
George Bernard Shaw was of the same persuasion as Wilde in terms of whether art imitated life or life imitated art. Shaw, in his preface to ‘Three Plays’ wrote: “I have noticed that when a certain type of feature appears in painting and is admired as beautiful, it presently becomes common in nature; so that the Beatrices and Francescas in the picture galleries of one generation come to life as the parlour-maids and waitresses of the next”. Shaw disagreed with Wilde on many points however. Wilde did not see anything reprehensible in the fact that life imitated art but Shaw did and saw it as a point issue that required redressing. Shaw believed that the art people usually chose to imitate was romanticized and idealistic and thus such imitation of art in life was reprehensible.

So basically, Wilde did not mind that people would romanticize camera cases due to its romanticized depiction in art, he simply observed it. George Bernard Shaw however did mind that people would romanticize aspects of life due to the ways in which they had been portrayed in artwork.



