1. Aestheticism
“Art for art's sake”

2. Context What? The aesthetic movement, part of the Decadent movement
Where? Europe (mainly England)
When? The last decades of XIX century
Who? Visual artists and writers
Why? Reaction against the romantic way of reading art and against restrictions of industrial society

3. Walter Pater Graduated and professor at Queen's College of Oxford;
Mainly influenced by J. Ruskin's Modern Painters and by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
His method is visible in the Preface to Studies in the Italian Renaissance
He became the pillar of a lot of younger artists like O. Wilde, J. Joyce and W. Yeats;
He is considered the founder and theorist of Aestheticism

4. Origins The Theorist: Walter Pater
Concept of Time: it is like a flowing river

5. The Pillars of the Aesthetic Movement
Nature is crude if compared to art → Life should copy art → Criticism to Realism and Romanticism;
Eternal youth ← Impossible → Tedium of everyday life;
Beauty as the primary element of art → Art should only show beauty: it has no other aims ▼
Art for Art's sake

6. Philosophical Aestheticism
Roots in I. Kant's thought → Beauty is not a feature of the object, but it is a relationship between it and the observer ;
Deeper analyzed from A. Schopenhauer → “Beauty” and “Sublime”;
And further on from S. Kierkegaard → I stage: Aesthetic;
Last but not least: F. Nietzsche → Dionysian (Aestheticism) over Apollinen spirit (Ratio), in contrast totraditional thought.

7. → “All art is quite useless”
Moral Aestheticism
Aestheticism as a life style → Art over Virtue
Gabriele D'Annunzio → Art as an expression of metamorphosis due to one's awareness of human limits
Oscar Wilde → Artist as creator of beautiful things
Critics as a subjective judgment
Vice and Virtues are material for an artist, language is the instrument
→ “All art is quite useless”