Morning Runner

Oscar Wilde opposed mimesis, the concept that art imitates life, and favoured antimimesis, the concept that life imitates art. Wilde believed that the ways in which people perceive life and nature is conditioned by what artists have taught people to see, and people have been taught this through art. Wilde asserts that the loveliness people find around them, the beautiful effects, “they did not exist till Art had invented them”. Halliwell asserts that the notion that life imitates art was not new in Wilde but was actually derived from classical notions which can be traced to the writings of Aristophanes of Byzantium. Aristophanes does not go quite so far as Wilde however, to totally negate mimesis, but rather “displaces its purpose onto the art-like fashioning of life itself”. A famous question posed by Aristophanes about the comedies by Menander was: “O Menander and Life! Which of you tookk the other as your model?”

According to Wilde, how we perceive life has been conditioned by art, even down to observing camera cases. The way in which we perceive camera cases is completely conditioned by what art has taught us to look for.