Oscar Wilde was a consumer modernist. His modernist aesthetics
drove him into the heart of the mass culture industries of 1890s
London, particularly the journalism and popular theatre
industries.
Wilde was extremely active in these industries: as a journalist
at the Pall Mall Gazette; as magazine editor of the Women's World;
as commentator on dress and design through both of these; and
finally as a fabulously popular playwright.
Because of his desire to impact a mass audience, the primary
elements of Wilde's consumer aesthetic were superficial ornament
and ephemeral public image - both of which he linked to the
theatrical. This concern with the surface and with the ephemeral
was, ironically, a foundational element of what became
twentieth-century modernism - thus we can call Wilde's aesthetic a
consumer modernism, a root and branch of modernism that was largely
erased.
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