Aestheticism

Aestheticism was the 19th-century British movement - with echoes across Europe - built on the slogan 'art for art's sake' (l'art pour l'art): a picture's value lay in its beauty and arrangement, not in narrative, morality or sentiment. James McNeill Whistler's tonal 'arrangements' and 'nocturnes', Albert Moore's harmonies of draped figures, and the sumptuous visions of Edward Burne-Jones and Frederic Leighton made beauty itself the subject. The movement dissolved the line between fine and decorative art: Whistler's Peacock Room (1876-77) is the supreme total interior, and designers carried the aesthetic into furniture and wallpaper. Cultivating mood, color harmony and Japanese design, Aestheticism scandalized Victorian moralists - and laid the groundwork for Art Nouveau and modern design.

Defining characteristics

• Tonal harmony and subtle color chords over dramatic incident
• Composition and arrangement treated as the true subject
• Decorative flatness and Japanese-inspired asymmetry (japonisme)
• Painting, furniture and interiors fused into aesthetic wholes
• Languid, dreamlike figures in ambiguous or abstract settings

Key figures

• James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) — Tonal 'arrangements' and nocturnes; art for art's sake in paint
• Albert Moore (1841-1893) — Classical figures arranged as pure color and line harmony
• Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) — Dreamlike medievalist figures, tapestries and designs
• Frederic Leighton (1830-1896) — President of the Royal Academy; polished classical beauty
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) — Sensuous portraits bridging Pre-Raphaelitism and Aestheticism

Example works

• Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl — James McNeill Whistler (1862)
• Nocturne in Black and Gold - The Falling Rocket — James McNeill Whistler (c. 1875)
• Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room — James McNeill Whistler and Thomas Jeckyll (1876-77)

Sources

• Aestheticism - Wikipedia encyclopedia

← Back to the catalog