Oscar Wilde wrote a fantastic essay called ‘The Critic as Artist’, an essay in which one truly accesses Wilde’s aesthetic philosophy. The essay comprises a dialogue and forms two parts. The Critic as Artist appeared in May 1891 yet had first appeared in the July and September issues of ‘The Nineteenth Century’. The original name of the essay as it appeared in ‘The Nineteenth Century’ was ‘The True Function and Value of Criticism’. The essay is basically a dialogue between Gilbert and Ernest, the latter suggesting ideas for the previous to systematically reject.

Any owners of astroscopes should truly read The Critic as Artist, an essay which explains the mechanics of how one’s work will be received. The accepted distinction between fine art and criticism which was cherished by artists and critics alike such as James Whistler and Matthew Arnold, is steadily broken down in Wilde’s essay. Wilde argues that the critical faculty is what enables artistic creation at all, and that criticism itself is completely independent of the object it is criticising in place of being subject to it.



