aestheticmovement.doc

This artistically self-conscious and highly fashionable British movement of the late 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s drew on a variety of sources. These included the work of artists associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, designers linked to the Arts and Crafts Movement and the work of Japanese artists and designers whose work became increasingly influential from the 1850s onwards. Oriental sources also provided British artists and designers such as James McNeil Whistler and E. W. Godwin with sources of inspiration that provided an alternative to the prevailing historicism characterizing much contemporary Victorian work. In fact, Art Furniture was a term frequently adopted in design periodicals, signalling an alternative contemporary artistic outlook to the prevalent commercialization of the past favoured by many contemporary Victorian manufacturers and consumers. The terms Art Industries and Art Potteries were also indicative of the preoccupations of a style that was satirized by George Du Maurier in the periodical Punch and W. S. Gilbert in the operetta Patience. The latter, subtitled an Aesthetic Opera, was first staged by DOyly Carte in 1881 with costumes supplied by Liberty & Co. Arthur Libertys store opened in Regent Street, London, in 1875. Libertys played a leading role in the commercialization of Aesthetic, especially oriental, goods, although a number of other London stores such as Swan & Edgar and William Whiteley also opened their own oriental departments in order to capture the attention of fashion-conscious metropolitan consumers. Amongst the purveyors of art industry products were Howell & James, W. B. Simpson & Sons, and Christopher Dressers short-lived Art Furniture Alliance which opened in London in 1880 for the sale of furniture, metalware, and other decorative artefacts with attendants wearing Aesthetic dress. In addition to those characteristics already identified, other ingredients of the Aesthetic sensibility included the literary, art for arts sake outlook of the poet and writer Oscar Wilde and the sensual illustrations of Aubrey Beardsley. Typical stylistic motifs included the sunflower, the lily, the peacock, and the stork as well as all kinds of oriental birds and fish. Many of the ways in which such motifs permeated the lives and possessions of fashionable society may be seen in the book illustration of artists such as Kate Greenaway and Walter Crane.Read more: /topic/aesthetic-movement-3#ixzz1xCrowMlFFor the firs time a direct correlation was being made between beautiful surroundings and the quality of ones life, and beautiful objects were being championed as fit for everybody and not just for the privileged elite. The movements emphasis was on interiors and artifacts that would improve the quality of life for their sheer beauty. The decorative arts were completely reevaluated and elevated to new status; the industrial revolution was resisted; an explosion of new clubs and organizations abounded, and people could not get enough of books on how to decorate ones home. Lionel Lambournes The Aesthetic Movement is a monumental work on the subject. Original scholarship combines with a flair for descriptive writing and an eye for the perfect representative example have combined to produce a seminal and definitive work that will grace every personal, academic or community library art history collection.The aesthetic movement (whose motto was art for arts sake, swept through North America and England in the late 19th century and touched every sphere of the fine and decorative arts. All aspects of design experienced new freedom and revitalization, perhaps best personified by the colorful Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley. Huge social and cultural changes occurred because more than a decorative style, the aesthetic movement reflected an attitude. For the firs time a direct correlation was being made between beautiful surroundings and the quality of ones life, and beautiful objects were being championed as fit for everybody and not just for the privileged elite. The movements emphasis was on interiors and artifacts that would improve the quality of life for their sheer beauty. The decorative arts were completely reevaluated and elevated to new status; the industrial revolution was resisted; an explosion of new clubs ry collection. - Midwest Book Review -This text refers to the Hardcover edition.唯美主义运动（Aesthetic movement）是于19世纪后期出现在英国艺术和文学领域中的一场组织松散的运动。通常，人们认为唯美主义和彼时发生在法国的象征主义或颓废主义运动同属一脉，是这场国际性文艺运动在英国的分支。这场运动是反维多利亚风格风潮的一部分，具有后浪漫主义的特征。它发生于维多利亚时代晚期，大致从1868年延续至1901年，通常学术界认为唯美主义运动的结束以奥斯卡王尔德被捕为标志。所谓唯美主义，就是以艺术的形式美作为绝对美的一种艺术主张。这里所说的美，是指脱离现实的技巧美。因此，有时也将唯美主义称为耽美主义或美的至上主义。 十九世纪末的英国唯美主义运动的形成，具有两大要素：一是比德（1839-1894）的快乐主义的批评；二是莫理思（1834-1896）的生活艺术化的思想。比德认为，文艺批评家的职责不在于掌握知识，罗列材料，以满足正确的美的定义，而应该具有一种特殊气质，善于感受美的对象的能力，将自己同书本中的内容紧密地联系起来，从中探讨得到的快感和乐趣，这才是审美批评的根本。莫理思认为，改造社会的目的是自由地伸展，就非使日常生活艺术化不可。任何文明社会，假如不能对它的成员提供这种环境，那么世界就没有存在的必要。比德和莫理思的上述观点，奠定了唯美主义的理论基础。再加上英国诗坛中拉斐尔前派的主要代表罗塞蒂（1828-1882）以及史文朋（1837-1909）等人的努力，终于形成了唯美主义运动。英国的颓废派作家们受瓦尔特佩特的影响非常大。佩特在1867年至1868年之间发表了一系列文章，主张人们应该热情的拥抱生活，追求生活的艺术化。颓废主义者们接受了这一观点。法国哲学家维克多库辛和奥菲尔戈蒂埃在法国推广了这一观念，提出“为艺术而艺术”的口号，并声称艺术与道德之间没有关联。 唯美主义运动中的作家和艺术家认为：艺术的使命在于为人类提供感观上的愉悦，而非传递某种道德或情感上的信息。因此，唯美主义者们拒绝接受约翰罗斯金和马修阿诺德提出的“艺术是承载道德的实用之物”的功利主义观点。相反，唯美主义者认为艺术不应具有任何说教的因素，而是追求单纯的美感。他们如痴如醉的追求艺术的“美”，认为“美”才是艺术的本质，并且主张生活应该模仿艺术。唯美主义运动的主要特征包括：追求建议性而非陈述性、追求感观享受、对象征手法的大量应用、追求事物之间的关联感应即探求语汇、色彩和音乐之间内在的联系。 唯美主义视浪漫主义诗人约翰济慈和雪莱为先驱，也受到了拉斐尔前派的影响。在英国，唯美主义最杰出的代表人物是奥斯卡王尔德和阿尔杰农查尔斯斯温伯恩，这两个人都接受过法国象征主义的影响。和唯美主义运动有关联的艺术家包括詹姆斯麦克尼尔惠斯勒和但丁加布里埃尔罗塞蒂。唯美主义思潮对室内设计也产生了影响。唯美主义的室内设计师们喜欢以孔雀羽毛和蓝白相间的中国瓷器作为装饰。唯美主义运动曾经受到来自杂志笨拙以及吉尔伯特和苏利文的小歌剧忍耐的嘲讽。Aesthetic Movement literatureThe British decadent writers were deeply influenced by the Oxford don Walter Pater and his essays published in 186768, in which he stated that life had to be lived intensely, following an ideal of beauty. His Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873) became a sacred text for art-centric young men of the Victorian era. Decadent writers used the slogan Art for Arts Sake (Lart pour lart), coined by the philosopher Victor Cousin and promoted by Thophile Gautier in France, and asserted that there was no connection between art and morality.The 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. As a consequence, they did not accept John Ruskin and Matthew Arnolds 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. Life should copy Art, they asserted. They considered nature as 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 effectsthat is, correspondence between words, colours and music.Aestheticism had its forerunners in John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley, and among the Pre-Raphaelites. In Britain the bes