Analysis of the Preface of The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The Preface of Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray is considered the manifesto of the Aesthetic movement. It is made up of a list of short sentences, that create an epigramatic effect: in this way what is said sticks into reader's mind. In the Preface the writer explains the new features art has to follow.
In the first sentence Mr Wilde states the artist is he who creates beautiful things: there is anymore the idea of an author, who has to teach something to the reader, but only the accomplishment of something beautiful that can satisfy the person.
Moreover the writer states that the only aim of art is to reveal itself and to hide the artist: it reflects the idea of "art for art's sake" because it has not to be useful (like the Victorian think) but to show itself and to be universal (while Romantic art is a personal art, that expresses poet's feelings). Mr Wilde reviews also critic position: he has a personal point of view and he gives a new sense to what he analyzes.
In the fourth sentence the double character of the Victorian Age emerges: there are the higher and the lower forms of criticism together and the writer does not say that one is better than the other, unlike Victorian Manicheism does. Moreover in a criticism work personal elements emerge, because there is a personal interpretation.
Then Mr Wilde criticizes who founds bad meanings in beautiful things: he refers to the Victorian, who condamn everything is not considered useful or moral. On the other side, people who founds beauty in beautiful things is an intelligent person.
Another criticism to the Victorian Manicheism is the idea about books: Mr Wilde says there are not moral or immoral books so the idea of the Victorian usefulness is refused. Only the form and the language used are the only elments that make of a work a work of art.
The criticism towards the Victorian goes on: they refuse Realism because it is their really aspect but at the same time they refuse Romanticism because they do not see what they are.
It is important that Mr Wilde thinks that the artist has not to teach anything to the others and that moral life is only a part of his work of art, unlike the Victorian think. Morality is not what makes a work a work of art.
The writer again attacks Victorian ideals, saying that also what is true can be proved.
Like morality, ethical sympathizes are not accepted in an artist, because art must be beside everythig and to be understood by everyone.
The tools the artist uses are thought and language and it is not possible to separate them.
Again Mr Wilde unites vice and virtue, against Victorian thought because the artist has not to chose what is right or wrong, but he goes beside the dualistic vision of reality.
The writer says also that art is both surface and symbol and that it is dangerous going in depth and that only people who are really sure to do it have to do it.
Oscar Wilde says that art reflects the observer: the concept of relativity of points of view is here introduced and it will be very important during Modernism. Real art is universal, temporal and timeless and the observer can find something of himself in it.
If there are many opinion about a work of art, it means that it is temporal and timeless, as T.S. Eliot will say. Different opinion about a work of art do not change the original idea of the artist.
At the end of the Preface Mr Wilde says that all art is quite useless: it means that art has not a utilitarian and material value.