Aestheticism

1. Aestheticism Last decades of XIX century

2. Ruskin had emphasized the importance of Art and Beauty as a means of moral progress. • The Pre-Raphaelites had also worshipped beauty above everything. • The Oxford university professor Walter Pater, in his essays published in 1867–68, stated that life had to be lived intensely, following an ideal of beauty. • Therefore it was quite easy for the painter James McNeill Whistler to introduce the French doctrine of “Art for Art’s sake” into England. • This doctrine placed theartist’s activity outside and above morals and led to the beginning of English literary Aestheticism, which can be defined as.... • a reaction against any utilitarian or moral conception of Art .

3. “Art for Art’s sake” meant: • art for the pleasure and sensations that it could produce, without any regard to standards of morality or utility. • The fundamental principles of this movement were the following: • The cult of beauty. • The choice for a life beyond common morality. • The solution of the dichotomy between senses and spirit through the theory of the spiritualization of the senses. • The reversal of the principle of art imitating life into that of life imitating art.

4. Walter Pater (1839-1894) • Pater was the defender of hedonism, a doctrine according to which ... • pleasure is the chief good to be pursued by man, i.e. the end of all human actions. • In his opinion , life should be treatedin the spirit of art, i.e. life as a work of art. • In his “Studies in the history of Renaissance”(1873) he stated that: • “the secret of happinessliesin the enjoyment of beauty”; • “the finest sensationsare to be found in art”; • “the deepest and noblest emotions can be experiencedin a life meant as a work of art.” • Through our senses we can enjoy any form of artistic beauty and thus live a deep spiritual experience. • This is particularly true if we live our life as if it were a work of art. • These ideas made him a sort of ascetic hedonist.