The Portrait of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde

2018

Full black goatskin with Japanese paper inlays gilded with caplain and yellow gold and aluminium highlights, gold tooled dots. Doublures of distressed aluminium with yellow gold highlights, endpapers are printed with lino ink and graphite, top edge graphite, silver leather endbands.

In a nod to the Art Nouveau, the covers depict a glossy, strutting veneer in a Beardsleyesque flourish of peacock feathers. They are a mere public façade though, doing nothing to hint at the darker interior. Within, a distressed mirror reflects a photograph of Justin Jedlica, the human Ken doll, by Phillip Toledano from his exhibition “A New Kind of Beauty.” This featured subjects who have undergone extensive plastic surgery in a bid to present a “perfect” public image, a modern day Dorian Gray perhaps? Though there is absolutely no inference that this is to disguise a hedonistic lifestyle like Dorian Gray’s but purely a comment on the contemporary pursuit of the preservation of youth and beauty.