Christa Giles

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also subsume his work. In Intentions, Wilde used the
structure of the piece to allow him to argue various
viewpoints which could all, theoretically, be perceived as
equally valid. Thus, in ˝The Truth of Masks,˝ he even goes
so far as to disagree with many of his own ideas
expounded in the essay. In the world of Art, Wilde, claims,
no universal truths exist:
A Truth in art is that whose contradictory is
also true. And just as it is only in art-criticism,
and through it, that we can apprehend the
Platonic theory of ideas, so it is only in artcriticism,
and through it, that we can realise
Hegel’s system of contraries. The truths of
metaphysics are the truths of masks. 505
Similarly, Huysmans believed that ˝la beauté n’est point
uniforme et invariable…elle change, suivant la climature,
suivant le siècle.˝ 506 This relativistic perception of a work of
art issued from a critical attitude which depended upon the
critic’s relationship with that work, his personal responses
to it. It did not depend on any external reality or fixed idea
as to what was the appropriate sphere of art or constituted
beauty or any other criteria superimposed upon it. Instead,
the critic tended to examine the piece on a purely aesthetic
plane – that is to say, in terms of form or pattern rather