Aestheticism
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- This article is about aestheticism, a term with a root meaning of sensuous; Not to be confused with the religious practice of asceticism: an abstinence from the sensual.
The Aesthetic Movement is a loosely defined movement in literature, fine art, the decorative arts, and interior design in later nineteenth-century Britain. Generally speaking, it represents the same tendencies that Symbolism or Decadence stood for in France, or Decadentismo stood for in Italy, and may be considered the British branch of the same movement. It belongs to the anti-Victorian reaction and had post-Romantic roots, and as such anticipates Modernism. It took place in the late Victorian period from around 1868 to 1901, and is generally considered to have ended with the trial of Oscar Wilde.
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[edit] Aesthetic Movement literature
The British decadent writers were deeply influenced by the Oxford don Walter Pater and his essays published in 1867–68, in which he stated that life had to be lived intensely, following an ideal of beauty. His Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873) became a sacred text for art-centric young men of the Victorian era. Decadent writers used the slogan "Art for Art's Sake" (L'art pour l'art), coined by the philosopher Victor Cousin and promoted by Théophile Gautier in France, and asserted that there was no connection between art and morality.
The artists and writers of the Aesthetic movement tended to hold that the Arts should provide refined sensuous pleasure, rather than convey moral or sentimental messages. As a consequence, they did not accept John Ruskin and Matthew Arnold's utilitarian conception of art as something moral or useful. Instead, they believed that Art did not have any didactic purpose; it need only be beautiful. The Aesthetes developed the cu