Dorian Gray leads what could be described as an aestheticized existence. In choosing to live out his sordid fantasies he's blurring the distinction between art and life. Dorian finds it impossible to live in a society governed by what he sees as petty moral values. He wants to experience life in all its richness, strangeness, and depth.
As he's unable to do this in respectable middle-class society, he retreats into a world of his own making, an aestheticized world in which, like an artist, he can give full vent to his creativity. Instead of creating works of art, however, he commits acts of unspeakable debauchery, each one more sordid than the last.
Dorian may have successfully created his own little world, but in the meantime the real world that he's left behind carries on much as before, and there's absolutely nothing he can do about it. The changing face of the portrait has come to represent the truth, but not in a narrowly aesthetic sense. In displaying the corrupt state of Dorian's soul, the picture is asserting, somewhat ironically, the separation of art and life, just as Dorian, in living a life of debauchery, tries to keep them together.
Eventually, however, Dorian recognizes the impossibility of this task and in destroying the portrait—and also himself—finally acknowledges that life and art are not the same.
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