The Preface

It is organized into a series of statements where Oscar Wilde expounds his ideas about art.  According to the writer,  Art is the creation of beautiful things. He goes on saying that the idea of morality is no way connected or to be connected to art.

What matter is how is produced: it can be well or badly produced. The instruments of the artist are thoughts and language.

Art does not mirror life and all art is quite useless.

The style of the Preface can give no ideas about his function ( aestheticism).

The writer seems to be dictating (dettando) a code. This happens because the ideas about art were very different in previous years ( art should be useful and teach morals) previous literature. It was Victorian literature and according with his standards, even art should be useful because whatever was not useful was sinful (peccaminoso).

Oscar Wilde rejects all that: the very short line in the end of the Preface reinforces the concept stylistically.

So it can be said  that the first function of the Preface is  to expand his ideas about art in the form of a provocation hurled ( lanciata) against of the existing standards.

At the same time, the Preface introduces a motif relevant to the all novel: the atmosphere typical of the period contemporary to Wilde.

It also hints at some of characteristic of the protagonist' personality ( Dorian Gray)

It is not art that has to mirror life but the life of an individual should become a work of art: it is the so-called motto of the doctrine of ART for ART'S SAKE.

It is not the artist he who matters but art.