In the preface to his only novel, “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” Oscar Wilde famously proclaimed that “all art is quite useless.” The statement seemed so intriguing to a contemporary, an Oxford University student named Bernulf Clegg, that in 1891 he wrote Wilde asking him where in his other work he “may find developed that idea of the total uselessness of all art.” Wilde, not directly answering Clegg’s question, responded: “Art is useless because its aim is simply to create a mood. It is not meant to instruct or influence action in any way. It is superbly sterile, and the note of its pleasure is sterility.”