Christa Giles

168
Que le style n’est en art qu’une qualité
secondaire, Je le nie . . . Non, la forme n’est
pas une qualité secondaire en art. 444
Style, in effect, was the artist’s means of reordering life into
art even as the dandy transmutes nature into art so that the
‘outward is expressive of the inward.˝ For, ˝what the artist
is always looking for is that mode of existence in which
soul and body are one and indivisible . . . in which Form
reveals.˝ 445 And truth and beauty are, according to Wilde,
simply matters of style. Thus art is autonomous, inward
looking, and self-conscious. If ˝Truth in Art is the unity of a
thing with itself: the outward expressive of the inward,˝ 446
art becomes hermetic, never expressing ˝anything but
itself,˝ 447 creating its own idiom and standards by which it
must be perceived.
Art, ironically, becomes the means whereby the
decadent, impotent in life, can actually assert the force of
his will, personality, and intellect (as indeed the dandy
does) through the creation of an original idiom. In effect,
this is the decadent’s means of triumphing over reality. In
his art criticism, Huysmans repeatedly refers to the artist as
one who can create new forms – a new vocabulary. It is his
capacity in this area which, in Huysmans’ view, constitutes
his greatness. Thus, he wrote of Moreau: