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As a radical Wildean I can see that he must have said these words back in the aesthetic period of his career where he followed the L'Art Pour L'art movement which (if Im not mistaken) was a Pater thing. At that time, Wilde was just starting to sow his artistic oats and tried to place himself within a role in the movement. In time, you can see how he changes this vision and comprises it with a bit more spirituality and gumption. During his "married period" he lost that idealistic view *and was bored to death as a result* and then moved on to weirder and more dangerous pursuits as his trial would show. Yet, I think that "all art is quite useless" as nothing to do with Wilde's own thought, and much more to do with his passive-aggressive "push-button" attempt to awaken society. Also, I think he said that just to be sarcastic. He was the Victorian "Colbert"...for sure, I think so.

I think I'm right to believe that Oscar Wilde did not literally mean are is useless but instead he intended his comment as praise. What he is outlining actually suggests that art is of a higher value than anything that is useful and that we as humans need the useless things more than that useful things in life.