English intellectuals and artists established the principles of art for art’s sake and experience for experience’s sake as a form of rebellion against Victorian moral judgment and Victorian restrictions on art, literature, and life.
The aesthetic movement’s intellectual roots can be found in the writings of German Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant
Charles
Although Gautier earned his living as a critic, he thought of himself as a poet and also wrote fiction. Dismayed by the low status in which art was held in a growing materialistic society, he argued in the preface to his novel Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835-1836; English translation, 1887) that art is valuable only if it is useless. Artists must be free to deal with any subjects they choose; insofar as a poem, novel, play, musical composition, or painting serves as a vehicle for improving morals or social conditions, it is not really art. This revolutionary theory—art for art’s sake—appealed to a select group who shared Gautier’s Romantic sensibilities but was met with strong negative reaction in France and later in England; hence, the belief in art for art’s sake became the rallying cry for a small coterie of practitioners and critics known as proponents of aestheticism.
While the French reading public continued to prefer the social realism of novelist Honoré de Balzac
Before the movement had attracted wide-scale attention from the English-speaking public, a handful of American and English writers had already begun to promote doctrines similar to those of Gautier
In England, the aesthetic movement can be understood best as a reaction to the dominant ideas held by the Victorians regarding the function of art, ideas promoted in the work of literary giants John Ruskin
Similarly, Arnold believed great literature possessed a quality he called high seriousness, the ability to help readers improve themselves (intellectually, if not materially) through the experience of engaging with a novel, poem, or play. In Essays in Criticism (1865 and 1888) he defined the critic’s task as seeing “the object as in itself it really is,” implying that it was possible for an artist’s message to be understood and used as a guide for living. Hence, from Ruskin and Arnold the Victorians had learned that great art must be clear in its meaning and moral in its import. These notions were turned upside down by Walter Pater, an Oxford scholar whose 1873 work Studies in the History of the Renaissance became the bible for the English aesthetic movement.
In examining the work of a number of Renaissance artists, Pater abandons the practice of comparing works with one another, or looking to established external principles for determining value in a work of art. Instead, he tells the reader how he was affected by particular paintings, sculptures, and writings.
James McNeill Whistler.
The ideas Pater advances in Studies in the History of the Renaissance were revolutionary in at least two ways. First, his call for art to exist for its own sake, as an object of beauty for contemplation by those of refined sensibilities, flew in the face of current theory about the function of art. Playfully reversing Arnold’s premise, Pater insists that for the aesthetic critic, “the first step towards seeing one’s object as it really is, is to know one’s own impression as it really is.” Reality, he goes on to argue, is simply a series of impressions, and the best one can do is to appreciate the impact of those impressions. This insight led to his second radical premise.
Pater argues that the way to make life worth living in the dreary, mechanistic world of Victorian Britain is to cultivate intense impressions, and to not follow conventional moral principles. Endorsing the notion that the goal of life is to pursue “not the fruit of experience, but experience itself,” Pater announced in the conclusion to Studies in the History of the Renaissance that “to burn always with this hard, gemlike flame”—to seek experience for its own sake—would lead to happiness. For Pater there was no right or wrong experience; all were equally possible of promoting keen sensations, which in turn would give meaning and joy to life. Pater’s pronouncement spawned a celebration of a lifestyle that would shock and offend “proper” Victorians: the life of the aesthete.
The reaction from mainstream Victorians to Pater’s new doctrine was swift and negative. He was denounced in the Quarterly Review for substituting personal impressions for traditional critical principles. He was attacked for trying to set up the critic as a mediator between the artist and the world at large, thus investing critics with special knowledge. He was accused of promoting a philosophy of hedonism that encouraged people to pursue pleasure as the only end in life. These harsh commentaries, and others like them, caused Pater to withdraw the conclusion from several subsequent editions of Studies in the History of the Renaissance, but by that time his ideas had reached a generation of young artists already rebelling against the constraints of Victorian society.
What Pater stated explicitly as a theory had been the practice of several of his predecessors and contemporaries. The world of the visual arts had always had its iconoclasts, and several painters, most notably the Pre-Raphaelites,
The visual artist who achieved perhaps the greatest notoriety as a practitioner of aestheticism was American painter James McNeill Whistler
Pater’s impact on the rising generation of writers and artists in the last three decades of the nineteenth century was notable. Numbered among those who openly professed an affinity for aestheticism were the artist Aubrey Beardsley
Wilde emerged as the most celebrated symbol of what became known as the Decadent movement of the last decades of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century in England. His outrageous dress and habits, as well as his rapier wit, earned him a worldwide reputation. He went out of his way to poke fun at Victorian conventions, writing a number of plays and essays that challenged Victorian values. His novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), modeled on Huysmans’s
The effects of the aesthetic movement, although waning after Oscar Wilde’s
Aesthetic principles inspired the members of the Rhymers’ Club, a group of poets organized in the 1890’s by William Butler Yeats. The twentieth century modernists, especially members of the Bloomsbury Group
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Bell-Villada, Gene. Art for Art’s Sake and Literary Life. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996. Analyzes the development of aestheticism as a philosophical and literary movement from its origins in the eighteenth century to its persistence in the postmodern theory of the late twentieth century. Includes chapters on the diffusion of the doctrine in England, the United States, and continental Europe. -
Chai, Leon. Aestheticism: The Religion of Art in Post-Romantic Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990. Traces the development of the aesthetic movement from its roots in France through English proponents such as Pater and Wilde. Demonstrates aestheticism’s persistence in twentieth century literature and literary studies. -
Court, Franklin E. Pater and His Early Critics. Victoria, B.C.: University of Victoria Press, 1980. Examines the reaction of important mainstream Victorian critics to Pater’s work and provides a sense of the British public’s understanding of the aesthetic movement. -
Donoghue, Denis. Walter Pater: Lover of Strange Souls. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995. A critical biography of Pater outlining the development of his ideas about art. Places his work in the context of nineteenth century literary and cultural criticism and traces his relationship with artists of his own and succeeding generations. -
Robbins, Ruth. Pater to Forster, 1873-1924. Houndsmill, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Examines the importance of Pater’s work in undermining Victorian ideas about morality and certitude. Also explores the work of disciples such as Symons and Wilde in reshaping attitudes about art and literature. -
Shaffer, Talia. The Forgotten Female Aesthetes: Literary Culture in Later Victorian England. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000. Traces the contributions of women to the development of the aesthetic movement and discusses a number of their works. Highlights differences in the reception given by the public to women and men practicing aestheticism.
American Renaissance in Literature
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood Begins
Courbet Establishes Realist Art Movement
Morris Founds Design Firm
Naturalist Movement Begins
New Guilds Promote the Arts and Crafts Movement
Decadent Movement Flourishes
Rise of the Symbolist Movement
Dreiser Publishes Sister Carrie
Matthew Arnold; Honoré de Balzac; Charles Baudelaire; Aubrey Beardsley; Samuel Butler; Charles Dickens; Gustave Flaubert; John Keats; William Morris; Walter Pater; Edgar Allan Poe; John Ruskin; Percy Bysshe Shelley; James McNeill Whistler; Oscar Wilde; Émile Zola.