Walter Pater: "In aesthetic criticism the first step towards seeing one's object as it really is, is to know one's own impression as it really is."
Oscar Wilde pushes beyond this (cheekily): "the primary aim of the critic is to see the object as in itself it really is not [...] To the critic the work of art is simply a suggestion for a new work of his own, that need not necessarily bear any obvious resemblance to the thing it criticizes."
Brian Dillon refers to this as "a throwaway theory of criticism as mood"