The Critic As Artist

"The Critic as Artist" is, in large part, a satiric response to such texts as Arnold's "Function of Criticism" and Pater's Preface to The Renaissance. Discuss it in relation to these texts, but also consider it as an Art-for-Art's-Sake (again, the belief that art has no purpose beyond itself) manifesto.

Maybe it’s just the cold, but I’m struggling through Wilde’s language. Gilbert, the obvious main speaker even though this is a dialogue between Gilbert and Ernest, seems like he’s going on and on to make this point and I feel like he could easily lose said point in it. Maybe that’s “art for art’s sake”? Going on with additional language because it’s interesting and he can. Wilde’s characters are obviously educated males that could only come off this way if Wilde himself was intelligent enough to know about the topics of which his characters speak. Ernest feels that criticism is a lowly ranking craft, “Because the best that he can give us will be an echo of rich music, a dim shadow of clear-outlined form.” Meaning that a critic does not create his own art, but something based off of the works of others. Gilbert on the other hand says that criticism is actually an art in itself, “The critic occupies the same relation to the work of art that he criticizes as the artist does to the visible world of form and colour, or the unseen world of passion and of thought.” Meaning that the critic is not just imitating others, but the art which he critiques is simply a base for his own sort of art. Here Gilbert’s opinions on criticism (and possibly Wilde’s) work with Arnold and Pater’s again. They all feel that the critic is to be used to find the good things in art. As Gilbert goes on about his long-winded opinion on criticism on art, Ernest only questions him here and there to encouraging him to continue on until he feels he could find a hole in the argument (or that’s my assumption at least, there’s not really proof of it). Even Gilbert seems to doubt his own point when as the two men are about to pause for supper, Ernest suggests that Gilbert is actually coming to his own point, about art for art’s sake, “Ah! You admit, then, that the critic may occasionally be allowed to see the object as in itself it really is.” Gilbert seems unsure and suggests they revisit this after supper.