Aestheticism
- Aestheticism, late 19th-century European arts movement which centred on the doctrine that art exists for the sake of its beauty alone, and that it need serve no political, didactic, or other purpose.
- Aesthetic Movement is an intellectual and art movement supporting the emphasis of aesthetic values more than social-political themes for literature, fine art, music and other arts.
- Prominent in Europe during the 19th century.
- It was supported by notable figures such as Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde.
- According to them arts should provide refined sensuous pleasure, rather than convey moral or sentimental messages.
- They developed a cult of beauty, which they considered the basic factor of art.
- Predecessors of the Aesthetics included John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley, and some of the Pre-Raphaelites who themselves were a legacy of the Romantic spirit.
- The Aesthetic Movement, also known as “art for art’s sake”.
- The Aesthetic Movement provided a challenge to the Victorian public when it declared that art was divorced from any moral or narrative content.
- In literature, aestheticism was championed by Oscar Wilde , Algernon Swinburne.
