The Picture of Dorian Gray Preface Analysis

            The preface in The Picture of Dorian Gray serves as an instruction manual for how this novel is intended to be read. Oscar Wilde categorizes the artist and the critics to be, respectively, the author and the reader. The author is “the creator of beautiful things” (Wilde 1) while the reader is “the critic […] who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things” (1). According to Oscar Wilde, an artist’s role, or an author in this sense, is to magnify the beauty behind art and to express it towards an audience. An audience’s role is to translate the art being expressed into self-indulged impressions of beautiful things. In aesthetic philosophy, the period of aestheticism is commonly referred as a period of sensuous thoughts, emotions, and impressions of beauty itself. Oscar Wilde’s preface relates to how it is necessary for art to be communicated through beauty; a reminiscence of various art forms that solidifies the fact how art exists only to communicate beauty.  

            Wilde simply characterizes art as a simple façade that can be immensely broken up into elements of symbols, complexity, and vitality. Wilde’s tone toward the audience can be depicted through the line “It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors” (2). By saying this Wilde fundamentally believes that “All art is at once surface and symbol” (2). Art is a simple façade that can be illustrated through its sheer surface, or can be analyzed through its complex styles. In doing so Wilde also recollects that “Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril” (2), and that “Those who read the symbol do so at their peril” (2) as well. Wilde suggests to his audience that art should be praised by its sheer beauty, and be taken upon as it is without any destruction of analysis. By going “beneath the surface”, Wilde offers that the audience can do so at their own risk, the risk being that an audience member will miss a possibly clear meaning behind some art form. In other words, Wilde’s tone in the preface can be described as formal and stated, meaning that the preface consists of free-standing statements that form a manifesto about the purpose of art and how appropriately this novel should be approached.