Aesthetic Movement: Art, Beauty, and Oscar Wilde
The Aesthetic Movement
The Aesthetic Movement was a 19th-century European movement that emphasized aesthetic values over moral or social themes in literature, fine art, the decorative arts, and interior design. It represents the same tendencies that symbolism or decadence stood for in France and may be considered the British branch of the same movement. It belongs to the anti-Victorian reaction, had post-Romantic roots, and, as such, anticipates modernism. It took place in the late Victorian period from around 1868 to 1901 and is generally considered to have ended with the trial of Oscar Wilde (1895).
Artists and writers of the Aesthetic movement tended to hold that the Arts should provide refined sensuous pleasure, rather than convey moral or sentimental messages. Consequently, they did not accept the 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. The Aesthetes developed the cult of beauty, which they considered the basic factor in art. They asserted that life should copy Art. They considered nature crude and lacking in design when compared to art. The main characteristics of the movement were: suggestion rather than statement, sensuality, massive use of symbols, and synaesthetic effects—that is, correspondence between words, colors, and music. A rallying cry of Aestheticism became the phrase “l’art pour l’art” – Art for Art’s sake.
Key Figures of the Aesthetic Movement
- English Writers of the 1890s: Oscar Wilde, Arthur Symons, Lionel Johnson, J. M. Whistler
- Aubrey Beardsley
- 20th-Century Writers: W. B. Yeats, T. E. Hulme, T. S. Eliot
Oscar Wilde and Aestheticism
Oscar Wilde made a great contribution to world literature by inheriting and developing aesthetic views in his literary creation.
His aesthetic views involve not only literary theory but also literary creation. For example, in practice, Oscar Wilde never ceased to work for the beauty of his literary art. He advocates the massive use of symbols and the correspondence between words, colors, and music. In theory, Oscar Wilde reconsiders the relation between art and life. Inheriting Gautier’s view of “art for art’s sake”, he advocates that life is the imitation of art, which can be seen in the preface of his book, The Picture of Dorian Gray, as “All art is quite useless”.
Aestheticism in The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde’s only novel, indicates a clear stand of the aesthetes by depicting a story of the idea of art, sensual pleasure, sin and soul, degrading morals, society, and civilization.
Oscar Wilde’s aestheticism can be seen in the preface, themes, plots, conflicts, the symbolic meaning of the characters, the symbolic meaning of the picture, and the languages of The Picture of Dorian Gray. The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim. Thought and language are to the artist instruments for an art. Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well-written or badly written.
Dorian Gray, as a typical character of aesthetic works, is attractive but dangerous. He is half devil and half angel. In fact, he is a symbol of the combination of art and life.
At the beginning of the story, he is an innocent and beautiful young man, knowing nothing about evil life. He loves beauty and pursues beauty. He wants to stay young and loves a girl who is the symbol of art. During this stage, he symbolizes art, whose nature is beauty.
Aestheticism in W.B Yeats’s works
In Yeats’s works: The most important thing in life is beauty; art is based on beauty. Avoid the physical model.