Oscar Wilde was here | Financial times

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British artist Maggi Hambling was about seven years old when a teacher read Oscar Wilde’s children’s stories to her class. She was captivated by what she describes as “a voice of the imagination.” She asked her parents for her complete works for her 12th birthday and still has her books, bound in blue leather. “His writing of her was unlike anything around me in Suffolk as a child,” she says. “She took Me to another place.”

hungry He is one of 16 contemporary artists included in De Profundis: Oscar Wildea new exhibition in The hotel in Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris, in the room where Wilde was staying when he died in 1900. The show pays tribute to “De Profundis,” the strange and wonderful 50,000-word letter that the Irish poet and playwright wrote to his lover. , Lord Alfred Douglas, while imprisoned in Reading Gaol for “acts of gross indecency”. Regulations dictated that Wilde was not allowed to work on novels or plays, but he was allowed to write letters, so in solitary confinement he described a sometimes exciting and sometimes tortuous affair.

The exhibition’s curator, Daniel Malarkey, reread the letter while staying at the hotel last year. One quote stood out: “I have grown tired of the articulate declarations of men and things. The mystical in art, the mystical in life, the mystical in nature: this is what I am looking for.” That’s what Malarkey hopes to give Wilde with this show. “Every piece I’ve chosen has a mystical quality,” he says. He wants the works, all of them for sale, to come together and then disperse, carrying with them a “Wildean perfume.”

The center of the exhibition is Hambling’s portrait. Wilde and the wallpaper, referring to his last words: “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.” His head falls into a murky wash of gray, surrounded by a deep orange floral motif, made with a “particularly ugly stencil,” the artist says. Wilde made his debut in Hambling’s work in a 1985 painting. In 1998, he created the first monument to him outside his native Ireland, near Trafalgar Square in London, depicting him rising from a green granite bench-shaped coffin.

Also included are works by the late artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman, who was among those calling for a public sculpture dedicated to Wilde in London. sands of timewith its hourglass, crucifix and bullet motif, could be seen as a nod to Wilde’s altered sense of prison time (and his lofty self-comparisons to Christ), while God of the V house (Molière) It is a work of Wilde’s more theatrical side. “Wilde is an essential part of queer history,” says Malarkey. “If you look at Jarman and the artists working today, you can see the influence of him, whether conscious or subconscious.”

Each piece I have chosen has a mystical quality.

Ashley Joiner is founder and director of strange circle, the LGBTQ+-led charity. “For people who are forging new spaces and new identities, art is a powerful tool. In the context of Wilde, you could say we have made a lot of progress,” they say, noting that this year marks the 20th anniversary of the repeal of Section 28 (which prevented local authorities and schools from “promoting” homosexuality). in the United Kingdom. Queercircle will honor the occasion by offering tours of over 30 galleries featuring LGBTQ+ artists in Frieze. “It’s an indicator of how far we’ve come,” Joiner says. “But it’s also important to remember that there are many people who risk their lives to be openly queer and present this work.”

Paul Mpagi Sepuya looks at photography through the lens of queerness and blackness. His work Study Mirror with Natural Light (0X5A1713)that appears in De Profundis: Oscar Wilde, focuses on a lush black velvet curtain, a camera on a tripod, and a pair of partially obscured legs. It is as much about the construction of images as it is about social and queer spaces.

These dualities are central to Wilde’s continued appeal. “On the one hand, his work and his life revolved around glamour, wit, a heightened state of intellectual replication, confidence and, some would say, gluttony and debauchery,” Malarkey says. “On the other hand, you have this character writing a letter who is deeply interested in spirituality, our relationship with nature, and wants to find meaning in life.”

Eleanor Lakelin plays with this dynamic in his elegant but crumbling vessels created from horse chestnut trees outside what was once Wilde’s cell in Reading. In addition, Katerina JebbThe image of Tilda Swinton, created in L’Hotel, is both clinical and otherworldly: the actress in profile, her gaze downcast, glowing golden in the darkness.

“It was a great combination,” Hambling says of Wilde. “Big and strong and yet also feminine.” His letter to Douglas is a quiet and chaotic, passionate and painful hymn to forbidden love.

“There was an element of [the queer community] Creating a universe for ourselves through the art of that time,” says Joiner. “And that still exists today.”

De Profundis: Oscar Wilde at L’Hotel, 75006 Paris, from October 18 to 22, by appointment at wilde@danielmalarkey.com