Oscar Wilde’s letter to an Oxford student on the uselessness of art:
My dear Sir
Art is useless because its aim is simply to create a mood. It is not meant to instruct, or to influence action in any way. It is superbly sterile, and the note of its pleasure is sterility. If the contemplation of a work of art is followed by activity of any kind, the work is either of a very second-rate order, or the spectator has failed to realise the complete artistic impression.
A work of art is useless as a flower is useless. A flower blossoms for its own joy. We gain a moment of joy by looking at it. That is all that is to be said about our relations to flowers. Of course man may sell the flower, and so make it useful to him, but this has nothing to do with the flower. It is not part of its essence. It is accidental. It is a misuse. All this is I fear very obscure. But the subject is a long one.
Truly yours,
Oscar Wilde
Dutch tubers is an ode to the ancient Dutch root- and tuberous plants. Scraggy, unsightly and growing underground they are the forgotten vegetables of the modern kitchen. I want to enhance the beauty of these old vegetables by rendering them in porcelain like pieces of curiosity and rekindle the honest yet scraggy beauty of the earth. This is a Homage to the jerusalem artichoke, the kohlrabi, the beetroot, the parsnip, the turnip, the salsify, the parsley root and the potato. With this collection of ornaments I want to give the Dutch tubers back their splendor.
