Aestheticism“Art for art's sake”

ContextWhat? The aesthetic movement, part of the Decadent movement

Where? Europe (mainly England)

When? The last decades of XIX century

Who? Visual artists and writers

Why? Reaction against the romantic way of reading art and against restrictions of industrial society

Walter Pater Graduated and professor at Queen's College

of Oxford; Mainly influenced by J. Ruskin's Modern

Painters and by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

His method is visible in the Preface to Studies in the Italian Renaissance

He became the pillar of a lot of younger artists like O. Wilde, J. Joyce and W. Yeats;

He is considered the founder and theorist of Aestheticism

Origins

The Theorist: Walter Pater

Concept of Time: it is like a flowing river

The Pillars of the Aesthetic Movement

Nature is crude if compared to art → Life should copy art → Criticism to Realism and Romanticism;

Eternal youth ← Impossible → Tedium of everyday life;

Beauty as the primary element of art → Art should only show beauty: it has no other aims

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Art for Art's sake

Philosophical Aestheticism

Roots in I. Kant's thought → Beauty is not a feature of the object, but it is a relationship between it and the observer ;

Deeper analyzed from A. Schopenhauer → “Beauty” and “Sublime”;

And further on from S. Kierkegaard → I stage: Aesthetic;

Last but not least: F. Nietzsche → Dionysian (Aestheticism) over Apollinen spirit (Ratio), in contrast totraditional thought.

Moral Aestheticism Aestheticism as a life style → Art over Virtue

Gabriele D'Annunzio → Art as an expression of metamorphosis due to one's awareness of human limits

Oscar Wilde → Artist as creator of beautiful things

Critics as a subjective judgment

Vice and Virtues are material for an artist, language is the instrument

→ “All art is quite useless”