Characteristics of Aestheticism Reaction against Realism, Didacticism, and Morality that characterised earlier and even concurrent cultural fashions The monotony and vulgarity of bourgeois life Belief in Art for Art’s Sake Unconventional lifestyle Appreciation of Beauty at the expense of utility and social value Pursuit of Pleasure & Worship of the Senses (Hedonism) Evocative Use of the language of senses Excessive attention to the self Typical representative: dandy see picture Anti-Natural: belief in the ornate, extreme artifice, performance, and exotic Walter Pater (theorist) :“to burn always like a hard gemlike flame”, filling each passing moment with intense experience, feeling all kinds of sensations

Aestheticism: places art above life holds that life should imitate art not that art should imitate life

“Art for art’s sake” in Wilde “All art is quite useless” (Preface to DG) Rejection of Victorian didacticism and realism Wrote only to please himself Moral imperative Soul can be cured only by the senses only by “Art as the cult of beauty” The artist: an alien in materialistic world Superior being social outcast

Art for Art’s sake This was one of the reactions against the materialism and commercialism of the Victorian industrial era, as well as a reaction against the Victorian convention of art for morality’s sake, or art for money’s sake.

Wilde’s dandy Aristocrat (vs. Bohemién) Pursuit of pleasure Indulgence in the beautiful (language, clothes, food, boys…) Elegance: symbol of spiritual superiority Uses wit to shock (and criticize) Individualist: absolute freedom

Credits www.sfu.ca/~ccolliga/Eng330--Wilde&Aestheticism.ppt Spiazzi-Tavella, Now & Then, Zanichelli