Slide 1: THE AESTHETIC MOVEMENT

At the end of the century there was an Anti-Victorian reaction and the Aesthetic movement was one of the most important current.

It was influenced by the French Symbolists poets (Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarmè).

The founder of this movement à Walter Peter

Born in London He had a catholic and his studies were based on the classics and philosophy, but he had also a passion for the Italian Renaissance.

Slide 2: The concept of art

The motto of the Aesthetic movement was “art for art’s sake”.

Art is only a way to stop time through the intensity of the ecstatic moment.

Intensity of the ecstatic moment à at the same time certainty and illusion

Slide 3: The features

Poets à search of beauty, of the ecstatic moment.

The ecstatic moment = the “Hard gem – like flame”

The real purpose of life was the aim of the artist’s aesthetic theory.

- impossibility to know the truth

- no absolute

- no virtues

- concept of art doesn’t depend of historical context

- nature is influenced by art

Slide 4: No Victorian values

Britain à the most important country of the world

Peolpe à became patriotic and they had a special mission: to civilize primitive people

Aesthetes (the most famous of whom Oscar Wilde) against Victorian public values:

- middle class morality

- the sense of earnestness

- moral and useful function of art.

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