sanmeow's review
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
i love when oscar wilde just talks. observes things. speaks his mind. cause he's just so real, i get him completely! i get the art for art's sake movement in general and i agree with it, but especially when he talks about it. the critic as artist is one of my favorite essays ever, i think about it so often. i also loved the style, i don't think it's for everyone but god i adore it ♡
jasonkatz119's review
4.0
A masterclass in artistic / aesthetic dialectics. He puts together these dialogues that present perfect attitudes conveying aesthetic convictions, and then challenges them, opposes them with other totally consuming, persuasive positions. Super polemical and interesting.
Spoiler
The collection ends with: "Not that I agree with everything that I have said in this essay. There is much with which I entirely disagree. The essay simply represents an artistic standpoint, and in æsthetic criticism attitude is everything. For in art there is no such thing as a universal truth. 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 art-criticism, and through it, that we can realise Hegel’s system of contraries. The truths of metaphysics are the truths of masks."Spoiler
octavia_cade's review against another edition
challenging
slow-paced
2.0
My goodness, but he does talk a lot of rubbish. The four essays in here, all dealing with Art in some fashion (and I use the capital letter deliberately, seeing as dear old Oscar gives the impression of utter disdain for anything else) are mildly clever but mostly interminable.
Reading them, I was struck mostly by the sense of incipient dread that any hostess must have felt when Oscar turned up for a dinner party. If she were lucky, she'd get the Wilde who wrote The Importance of Being Ernest, and he would make terribly witty, terribly well-constructed observations and be a delight to the whole table. If she were very unlucky, she'd get the Oscar of Intentions, a gaseous windbag pontificating at endless length about the proper understanding of Art until people drowned themselves in the soup, just to get it to stop.
Reading them, I was struck mostly by the sense of incipient dread that any hostess must have felt when Oscar turned up for a dinner party. If she were lucky, she'd get the Wilde who wrote The Importance of Being Ernest, and he would make terribly witty, terribly well-constructed observations and be a delight to the whole table. If she were very unlucky, she'd get the Oscar of Intentions, a gaseous windbag pontificating at endless length about the proper understanding of Art until people drowned themselves in the soup, just to get it to stop.
lorriemerson's review
4.0
Oscar Wilde discusses Art, Beauty, and Truth in four essays that are just as witty, intelligent, outrageous, and snarky as his fiction. Sometimes he takes things a little too far, thus earning 4 instead of 5 stars from me.
dany_casimiro's review against another edition
4.0
As said by Wilde himself right at the beginning of this book “thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any other disease”. In his paradoxical, puzzling way, he then starts to reflect on matters such as Beauty, Nature, and Art – quite the unexpected follow-up, as he himself has just apparently criticized the act/state of thinking. If this little detail does not sum up a bit of what he was as a writer and as a person, nothing else will. It is in his own name – bewildering – and his texts, beautiful works of art themselves, are eternal proof of that. Intentions consists of a collection of essays on topics around art, literature, criticism, and society. Once again, each sentence is a dignification of the Art which he endorsed above else – “Art has no other aim but her own perfection”. They show this writer at the best of his capabilities: educated, easy-going, and especially witty. But, above all, they show how perceptive he was, as a lot of his thoughts can still be applied to our present century.
lauralore's review
4.0
“For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world”
A collection of writings and observations, Intentions ponders topics such as what art is and whether criticism can be an art form to how wardrobe details affect a play and the audience’s perception of the play.
A little pretentious at times, but still rather entertaining, with Wilde’s usual sass and wit and incredible quote-ability, this was a thoroughly entertaining read.
A collection of writings and observations, Intentions ponders topics such as what art is and whether criticism can be an art form to how wardrobe details affect a play and the audience’s perception of the play.
A little pretentious at times, but still rather entertaining, with Wilde’s usual sass and wit and incredible quote-ability, this was a thoroughly entertaining read.
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