The Aesthetic Movement is a 19th century European movement that emphasized aesthetic Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste. More broadly, scholars in the field define aesthetics as "critical values over moral or social themes in literature Literature,, is the art of written works. Literally translated, the word means acquaintance with letters (as in the Arts and Letters"). In Western culture the most basic written literary types include fiction and nonfiction, fine art Fine art describes an art form developed primarily for aesthetics and/or concept rather than practical application. Art is often a synonym for fine art, as employed in the term "art gallery", the decorative arts The decorative arts is a traditional term for a number of arts and crafts for the making of ornamental and functional works in a great range of materials including ceramic, wood, glass, metal, textiles and many others. The field includes ceramics, glassware, furniture, furnishings, interior design, but not usually architecture. The decorative arts, and interior design.[1][2] Generally speaking, it represents the same tendencies that symbolism Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the movement had its roots in Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire. The works of Edgar Allan Poe, which Baudelaire greatly admired and translated into French, were a significant influence and the source of many stock tropes or decadence The Decadent movement was a late 19th century artistic and literary movement in Western Europe, primarily in France stood for in France, or decadentismo Decadentism was an Italian artistic movement based loosely on the Decadent movement found in France and England at the end of the nineteenth century. Its chief writers were Antonio Fogazzaro, Italo Svevo, Giovanni Pascoli and Gabriele D'Annunzio. Although differing in their approaches, they championed the idiosyncratic and the irrational against 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 Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes both a set of cultural tendencies and an array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The term. It took place in the late Victorian period The Victorian era of the United Kingdom was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from June 1837 until her death on the 22nd of January 1901. The reign was a long period of prosperity for the British people, as profits gained from the overseas British Empire, as well as from industrial improvements at home, allowed an educated middle class to from around 1868 to 1901, and is generally considered to have ended with the trial of Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer, poet, and prominent aesthete. His parents were successful Dublin intellectuals and from an early age he was tutored at home, where he showed his intelligence, becoming fluent in French and German. He attended boarding school for six years, then matriculated to university at seventeen years (which occurred in 1895).

Contents

Aesthetic Movement literature

The British decadent writers were deeply influenced by the Oxford Oxford (pronounced /ˈɒksfərd/ ) is a city, and the county town of Oxfordshire, in South East England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 151,000 living within the district boundary. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through Oxford and meet south of the city centre. For a distance don Walter Pater Walter Horatio Pater was an English essayist, critic of art and literature, and writer of fiction and his essays published in 1867–68, in which he stated that life had to be lived intensely, following an ideal of beauty Beauty is a characteristic of a person, animal, place, object, or idea that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure, meaning, or satisfaction.[citation needed] Beauty is studied as part of aesthetics, sociology, social psychology, and culture. An "ideal beauty" is an entity which is admired, or possesses features widely attributed. His Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873) became a sacred text for art-centric young men of the Victorian era The Victorian era of the United Kingdom was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from June 1837 until her death on the 22nd of January 1901. The reign was a long period of prosperity for the British people, as profits gained from the overseas British Empire, as well as from industrial improvements at home, allowed an educated middle class to. Decadent writers used the slogan "Art for Art's Sake "Art for art's sake" is the usual English rendering of a French slogan, from the early 19th century, ''l'art pour l'art'', and expresses a philosophy that the intrinsic value of art, and the only "true" art, is divorced from any didactic, moral or utilitarian function. Such works are sometimes described as "autotelic"," (L'art pour l'art), whose origin is debated. Some claim that it was coined by the philosopher Victor Cousin Victor Cousin was a French philosopher, although Angela Leighton in On Form: Poetry, Aestheticism and the Legacy of a Word (2007) notes that the phrase is used by Benjamin Constant as early as 1804[3]. It is generally accepted to have been widely promoted by Théophile Gautier in France, who took the phrase to suggest that there was no connection between art and morality Morality is a sense of behavioral conduct that differentiates intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good (or right) and bad (or wrong). A moral code is a system of morality (for example, according to a particular philosophy, religion, culture, etc.) and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code. Immorality is.

One of many Punch Punch was a British weekly magazine of humour and satire published from 1841 to 1992 and from 1996 to 2002. Punch material was also collected in book formats from the late nineteenth century, including Pick of the Punch annuals with cartoons and text features, Punch and the War , and A Big Bowl of Punch – which was republished a number of times cartoons about æsthetes.

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 John Ruskin was an English art critic and social thinker, also remembered as a poet and artist. His essays on art and architecture were extremely influential in the Victorian and Edwardian eras and Matthew Arnold Matthew Arnold was an English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, literary professor, and William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator. Matthew Arnold has been characterized as a sage writer, a type of's utilitarian conception of art as something moral or useful. Instead, they believed that Art did not have any didactic Didacticism is an artistic philosophy that emphasizes instructional and informative qualities in literature and other types of art. The primary intention of didactic art is not to entertain or to pursue subjective goals, but to teach. Didactic plays, for instance, teach the audience through the use of a moral or a theme. An example of didactic purpose; it need only be beautiful. The Aesthetes developed the cult of beauty, which they considered the basic factor in art. Life should copy Art, they asserted. They considered nature as crude and lacking in design when compared to art. The main characteristics of the movement were: suggestion rather than statement, sensuality, massive use of symbols, and synaesthetic Synesthesia —from the Ancient Greek σύν (syn), "together," and αἴσθησις (aisthēsis), "sensation"—is a neurologically-based condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. People who report such experiences effects—that is, correspondence between words, colours and music. It was the music that set the mood.

Aestheticism had its forerunners in John Keats John Keats was the last born of the English Romantic poets and, at 25, the youngest to die. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death. During his life, his poems were not and Percy Bysshe Shelley Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron. The novelist Mary Shelley was his second wife, and among the Pre-Raphaelites The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets, and critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The three founders were soon joined by William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens and Thomas Woolner to form a seven-member "brotherhood". In Britain the best representatives were Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer, poet, and prominent aesthete. His parents were successful Dublin intellectuals and from an early age he was tutored at home, where he showed his intelligence, becoming fluent in French and German. He attended boarding school for six years, then matriculated to university at seventeen years and Algernon Charles Swinburne Algernon Charles Swinburne was an English poet, controversial in his own day. He invented the roundel form, wrote some novels, and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. From 1903 to 1909 he was constantly nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, both influenced by the French Symbolists, and James McNeill Whistler James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American-born, British-based artist. Averse to sentimentality and moral allusion in painting, he was a leading proponent of the credo "art for art's sake". His famous signature for his paintings was in the shape of a stylized butterfly possessing a long stinger for a tail. The symbol was apt, for it and Dante Gabriel Rossetti Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 and was later to be the main inspiration for second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement. He was also a major precursor of the Aesthetic movement. The movement and these poets were satirised in Gilbert and Sullivan Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian era partnership of librettist W. S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900). The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado are among the best known's comic opera Patience Patience, or Bunthorne's Bride, is a comic opera in two acts with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. First performed at the Opera Comique, London, on 23 April 1881, it moved to the 1,292-seat Savoy Theatre on 10 October 1881, where it was the first theatrical production in the world to be lit entirely by electric light and other works, such as F. C. Burnand Burnand was a contributor to Punch for 45 years and its editor from 1880 until 1906. He was also a prolific humorist and writer, creating almost 200 burlesques, farces, pantomimes and other works. He was knighted in 1902 for his work on Punch's The Colonel, and in comic magazines, such as Punch Punch was a British weekly magazine of humour and satire published from 1841 to 1992 and from 1996 to 2002. Punch material was also collected in book formats from the late nineteenth century, including Pick of the Punch annuals with cartoons and text features, Punch and the War , and A Big Bowl of Punch – which was republished a number of times.

Compton Mackenzie Sir Edward Montague Compton Mackenzie was an English-born Scottish novelist and nationalist's novel Sinister Street makes use of the type as a phase through which the protagonist passes under the influence of older, decadent individuals. The novels of Evelyn Waugh Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966) was an English writer, best known for such darkly humorous and satirical novels as Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, Scoop, A Handful of Dust, and The Loved One, as well as for serious works, such as Brideshead Revisited and the Sword of Honour trilogy that clearly manifest his Catholic, who was a young participant in aesthete society at Oxford, portray the aesthete mostly from a satirical point of view, but also from that of an insider. Some names associated with this loose assemblage are Robert Byron Robert Byron was a British travel writer, best known for his travelogue The Road to Oxiana. He was also a noted writer, art critic and historian, Evelyn Waugh Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966) was an English writer, best known for such darkly humorous and satirical novels as Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, Scoop, A Handful of Dust, and The Loved One, as well as for serious works, such as Brideshead Revisited and the Sword of Honour trilogy that clearly manifest his Catholic, Harold Acton Sir Harold Mario Mitchell Acton CBE was a British writer, scholar and dilettante who is probably most famous for being believed, incorrectly, to have inspired the character of "Anthony Blanche" in Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited (1945). Waugh himself wrote, "The characters in my novels often wrongly identified with Harold, Nancy Mitford Nancy Freeman-Mitford, CBE , styled The Hon. Nancy Mitford before her marriage and The Hon. Mrs Rodd thereafter, was an English novelist and biographer, one of the Bright Young People on the London social scene in the inter-war years. She was born at 1 Graham Street (now Graham Place) in Belgravia, London, the eldest daughter of Lord Redesdale and, A.E. Housman and Anthony Powell Anthony Dymoke Powell, CH, CBE was an English novelist best known for his twelve-volume work A Dance to the Music of Time, published between 1951 and 1975. According to his memoirs, Powell rhymes with pole (not towel).

Aesthetic Movement visual arts

Artists associated with the Aesthetic movement include James McNeill Whistler James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American-born, British-based artist. Averse to sentimentality and moral allusion in painting, he was a leading proponent of the credo "art for art's sake". His famous signature for his paintings was in the shape of a stylized butterfly possessing a long stinger for a tail. The symbol was apt, for it, Dante Gabriel Rossetti Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 and was later to be the main inspiration for second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement. He was also a major precursor of the Aesthetic movement, Edward Burne-Jones Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet was a British artist and designer closely associated with the later phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who worked closely with William Morris on a wide range of decorative arts as a founding partner in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and Company. Burne-Jones was closely involved in the rejuvenation of the, and Aubrey Vincent Beardsley Aubrey Vincent Beardsley was an English illustrator and author. His emphasis of the erotic element is present in many of his drawings, but nowhere as boldly as in his illustrations for Lysistrata which were done for a privately printed edition at a time when he was totally out of favor with polite society. One of his last acts after converting to.

Aesthetic Movement decorative arts

An Aesthetic Movement overmantle, showing ebonized wood with gilded highlights of peacock feathers and flowers, and a top which has a color painting of birds and flowers.

Aesthetic furniture was limited to approximately late nineteenth-century The 19th century was a period in history marked by the collapse of the Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Holy Roman and Mughal empires. This paved the way for the growing influence of the British Empire, the German Empire and the United States, spurring military conflicts but also advances in science and exploration. Furniture typically originated in Britain/Ireland (usually referred to as simply "Aesthetic") or in the United States (usually referred to as "American Aesthetic").

Aesthetic movement furniture is characterized by several common themes:

Ebonized furniture means that the wood is painted or stained to a black ebony finish. The furniture is sometimes completely ebony-colored. More often however, there is gilding added to the carved surfaces of the feathers or stylized flowers that adorn the furniture.

Japan was a relatively newly contacted culture in terms of influence, and looking at aesthetic furniture, there are commonalities especially in the overall rectangular shape with columns, and the intricate woodcarvings, this influence can be seen in a concurrent movement known as the Anglo-Japanese style The style developed in parallel with the British Arts and Crafts Movement and the Aesthetic Movement. In furniture design the impact is seen in simple rectilinear lines, a simplification of pattern and motif, and a value placed on the handmade, using materials that ranged from expensive high style ebonized woods to humble materials like beech or, especially in the work of E.W. Godwin Edward William Godwin was a progressive English architect-designer, who began his career working in the strongly polychromatic "Ruskinian Gothic" style of mid-Victorian Britain, inspired by The Stones of Venice, then moved on to provide designs in the "Anglo-Japanese taste" of the Aesthetic Movement and Whistler's circle in the and Christopher Dresser Christopher Dresser was a designer and writer on design, now widely known as Britain’s first independent industrial designer and as a contributor to the Anglo-Japanese and Aesthetic movements in Britain.

1881 teapot in the shape of an Aesthete, with calla lily

As aesthetic movement decor was similar to the writing in that it was about sensuality and nature, nature themes often appear on the furniture. A typical aesthetic feature is the gilded carved flower, or the stylized peacock feather. Colored paintings of birds or flowers are often seen. Non-ebonized aesthetic movement furniture may have realistic 3D renditions of birds or flowers carved into the wood.

Contrasting with the ebonized-gilt furniture is use of blue and white in porcelain and china. Similar themes of peacock feathers and nature would be used in blue and white tones on dinnerware and other crockery. The blue and white design was also popular on square porcelain tiles. It is reported that Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer, poet, and prominent aesthete. His parents were successful Dublin intellectuals and from an early age he was tutored at home, where he showed his intelligence, becoming fluent in French and German. He attended boarding school for six years, then matriculated to university at seventeen years used aesthetic decorations during his youth. This aspect of the movement was also satirised in Punch magazine and in Patience.

In 1882, Oscar Wilde visited Canada where he toured the town of Woodstock, Ontario and gave a lecture on May 29 entitled; "The House Beautiful".[4] This particular lecture featured the early Aesthetic art movement also known as the "Ornamental Aesthetic" art movement, where local flora and fauna were celebrated as beautiful and textured, layered ceilings were popular. A gorgeous example of this can be seen in Annandale National Historic Site The Annandale House was first built in 1883 by Edwin Delevan Tillson and his wife Mary Ann as part of Mr. Tillson's retirement project, Annandale Farm. Located in Tillsonburg, Ontario, Canada; the historic house has become a National Historic site and museum serving local history buffs, Aesthetes and Old homes enthusiasts alike, located in Tillsonburg, Ontario, Canada. The house was built in 1880 and decorated by Mary Ann Tillson, who happened to attend Oscar Wilde's lecture in Woodstock, and was inspired. Since the Aesthetic art movement was only prevalent in 1880 through to 1890, there are not very many examples of this particular style left today.

Irrationalism and Aestheticism

A Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881 by WP. Frith, a satire on the influence of the Aesthetic Movement in dress. Oscar Wilde is depicted at the right, surrounded by admirers

Irrationalism and aestheticism were philosophical movements which formed as a cultural reaction against positivism in the early 20th century. These perspectives opposed or deemphasized the importance of the rationality of human beings. Instead, they concentrated on the experience of one's own existence.

Part of the movements involved claims that science was inferior to intuition. In this project, art was given an especially high place, as it was considered the gateway to the noumenon. The movement was not widely accepted by the public, as the social system generally limited access of the art to the elite (ie. a "Mandarin elitism").

Some of the followers of this idea are Fyodor Dostoevsky, Henri Bergson, Lev Shestov and Georges Sorel. Symbolism and existentialism grew out of these schools of thought.

See also

References

  1. ^ Fargis, Paul (1998). The New York Public Library Desk Reference - 3rd Edition. Macmillan General Reference. pp. 261. ISBN 0-02-862169-7.
  2. ^ Denney, Colleen. "At the Temple of Art: the Grosvenor Gallery, 1877-1890", Issue 1165, p. 38, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000 ISBN 0838638503
  3. ^ Angela Leighton (2007) 32.
  4. ^ O'brien (1982) 114.

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