Wilde's approach is that Wainewright's criminal activities reveal the soul of a true artist. The artist must have a "concentration of vision and intensity of purpose" that exclude moral or ethical judgment. True aesthetes belong to the "elect," as Wilde calls them in "The Decay of Lying," and are beyond such concerns. As creative acts, there is no significant difference between art and murder. The artist often will conceal his identity behind a mask, but Wilde maintains that the mask is more revealing than the actual face. Disguises intensify the artist's personality. Life itself is an art, and the true artist presents his life as his finest work. Wilde, who attempted to make this distinction in his own life through his attempts to re-create himself, includes this theme in The Picture of Dorian Gray.
The longest of the essays in Intentions, "The Critic as Artist," first appeared in two parts (July and September 1890) with the significant title, "The True Function and Value in Criticism; With Some Remarks on the Importance of Doing Nothing: A Dialogue." It is considered to be a response to Matthew Arnold's essay "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time" (1865). Arnold's position is that the creative faculty is higher than the critical. The central thesis of Wilde's essay is that the critic must reach beyond the creative work that he considers.
The setting of the dialogue is a library in a house in London's Piccadilly area overlooking Green Park, and the principal characters are Gilbert and Ernest.
Along with the central theme of the importance of the critic, Gilbert espouses the significance of the individual. The man makes the times; the times do not make the man. Further, he advocates that "Sin is an essential element of progress." Sin helps assert individuality and avoid the monotony of conformity. Rules of morality are non-creative and, thus, evil.
The best criticism must cast off ordinary guidelines, especially those of Realism, and accept the aesthetics of Impressionism — what a reader feels when reading a work of literature rather than what a reader thinks, or reasons, while reading. The critic must transcend literal events and consider the "imaginative passions of the mind." The critic should not seek to explain a work of art but should seek to deepen its mystery.
