Aestheticism (or the Aesthetic Movement) is an art movement supporting

the emphasis of aesthetic values more than social-political themes for

literature, fine art, music and other arts
Most writers on the Aesthetic Movement agree that its roots lie in the
reaction to Industrialization in mid-19th century England
The labor divisions were depriving the craftsman of the pleasure of his work
and as work was central to the social life of the individual, this disintegrated
and debased English society. Beauty and quality were ignored for profit and
quantity.
Aestheticism embraces arts difference from real life
an object can be beautiful aesthetically, but artistically it is judged by its
originality
The artists and writers of Aesthetic style tended to profess that the Arts
should provide refined sensuous pleasure, rather than convey moral or
sentimental messages.
As a consequence, they did not accept John Ruskin and Matthew Arnold's
utilitarian conception of art as something moral or useful. Instead, they
believed that Art did not have any didactic purpose; it need only be beautiful
However, Aestheticism threatened the Victorian respectability and morality
by emphasizing sensuous pleasure and a life ideal of beauty.
Life should imitate art
ART FOR ARTS SAKE
Art for arts sake concerns experimentalism in the fields of painting and
poetry
The aesthetes also refuted the idea that there was a correlation between art
and the age in which it was created. In other words, art should not be
interpreted as historical evidence, but rather appreciated for its own,
independent history and progress
Many aesthetes are known to have been either homosexuals or interested in
homoeroticism, which can be partly attributed to their fondness of Greek
culture. Since the Greeks allowed male to male love and even encouraged it
as an acceptable source of pleasure, the concept of homosexuality appears
frequently in their art and literature
It involves a devotion to art and it denotes the importance of beauty
compared with other values, as morality and material utility.
Aestheticism attempts to separate art from life in order to reduce moral
implications

 The Aesthetes developed a cult of beauty, which they considered the basic
factor of 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 style were: suggestion rather than statement, sensuality, great use of
symbols, and synaesthetic effectsthat is, correspondence between words,
colours and music. Music was used to establish mood.
Predecessors of the Aesthetics included John Keats and Percy Bysshe
Shelley, and some of the Pre-Raphaelites. In Britain the best representatives
were Oscar Wilde and Algernon Charles Swinburne, both influenced by the
French Symbolists, and James McNeill Whistler and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

.
Wilde is famous for writing poems, plays, short stories, criticism and one novel,
The Picture of Dorian Gray, written during his late career which concerns the
issue of devotion to art. The storys main characters are three men
seeking beauty in life; Lord Henry, a wise teacher of aesthetic principles, Basil
Hallward, an artist, and Dorian Gray, a model learning about aesthetic values
The novel mainly concerns a discussion among these three men, who are
fascinated by each others beauty and opinions. The story was highly debated
regarding whether it is morally repulsive, due to the focus it places on fascination
between men, or a work of Aestheticism.
Wilde, inspired by Kants first movement, is encouraging the idea that
beauty is not something which can be experienced logically, through thought. It
must be experienced aesthetically, and to do so one must simply experience beauty
through its pleasures. There is a mystery in what is beautiful, because it is just
experienced as something which pleases.
Dorian Gray represents the supreme beauty the artist Basil Hallward can enjoy
having before his eyes. Wilde even makes an explicit comparison between Greek
sculptures and Dorian Gray through Basil Hallwards claim: What the invention
of oil-painting was to the Venetians, the face of Antinos was to late Greek
sculpture, and the face of Dorian Gray will some day be to me

Wilde compares the lives of an ordinary woman to that of an actress:

`~Ordinary women never appeal to ones imagination. They are limited to
their century. No glamour ever transfigures them. One knows their minds as
easily as one knows their bonnets. One can always find them. There is no
mystery in any of them. They ride in the Park in the morning, and chatter at
tea-parties in the afternoon. They have their stereotyped smile, and their
fashionable manner. They are quite obvious. But an actress! How different
an actress is!~` ->Here it seems like Wilde tries to promote art, by devaluing
ordinary women while giving artistic women a higher status.
Wilde made furthermore a number of negative statements about women: No
woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say,
but they say it charmingly
`Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being
charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are
the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things
mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books
are well written, or badly written. That is all
It is better to be beautiful then to be good, but it is better to be good then to be
ugly.
Beauty is a form of Genius--is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no
explanation. It is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or springtime, or
the reflection in the dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be
questioned. It has divine right of sovereignty.
But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is
in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face.
Genius lasts longer than beauty
People say sometimes that Beauty is superficial. That may be so. But at least it is
not so superficial as Thought is. To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only
shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is
the visible, not the invisible.
I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait
you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that
passes takes something from me and gives something to it. Oh, if it were only the

other way! If the picture could change, and I could be always what I am now! Why
did you paint it? It will mock me some daymock me horribly!
We live in an age that reads too much to be wise, and that thinks too much to be
beautiful.
What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the
canvas. They would mar its beauty, and eat away its grace. they would defile it,
and make it shameful. And yet the thing would still live on. It would be always
alive. (Dorian Gray regarding his portrait)
What of Art?
-It is a malady.
--Love?
-An Illusion.
--Religion?
-The fashionable substitute for Belief.
--You are a sceptic.
-Never! Scepticism is the beginning of Faith.
--What are you?
-To define is to limit.
Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are
disappointed.
The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite
history. - Dorian recalls this line from "a mad letter" that a fervent admirer of his beauty had
written to him