AESTHETICISM
Features
Artists
Were seen as the transcribers of their
percepition/sense of the world
Oscar Wilde
Was, in his twenties, an
exemplary Aesthete
Journal
"The Yellow Book"
Was a leading British journal of the 1890s which was associated with Aestheticism,
Art
Not didactic
Not moralised
Not referred to life
Theory
Life as a "work of art"
Life should be lived in the spirit of art
Sense of the "attreactive" and the "gracious"
Feeling great sensations
Feeling all kind of sensations
Intense experiences
Art is the only certain
Reject the religious faith
Literary language
Absence of any didactic aim
Disenchantment with contemporary society
Perversity in subject metter
Hedonistic attitude
Excessive attention to the self
Evocative use of the language of sense
Origins
Walter Pater (1839-1894)
Had a deep influence on the artists and
the writers of the 1890s
His masterpieces
Were immediately successful with the young
because of their subversive and "demoralising" message
"Marius the Epicurean" (1885)
"Studies in the History
of the Renaissance" (1873)
Was the theorist of the
Aesthetic Movement in England