3/27/14 Bellwork:
Consider the word (noun)‘aesthetic’, which means ‘concerning art or beauty’ or ‘pleasing in appearance’
Write down the definition as well as 3 sentences using the word.
Example sentence: There are practical as well as aesthetic reasons for planting trees.
AGENDA: Bellwork: page 98 -
aesthetic Handout: background
Info – Page 99 Notes – Aesthetic
movement: page 101/assignment 100
Wilde and Aestheticism (notes for page 101)
Left side assignment for page 100: create a full page illustration that some how represents the elements
of the Aesthetic movement and find ONE quote from Earnest that
illustrates it
Characteristics of Aestheticism Reaction against
Realism, Didacticism, and Morality that characterised earlier and even concurrent cultural fashions
The monotony and vulgarity of bourgeois life Belief in Art for Art’s Sake
Unconventional lifestyle
Appreciation of Beauty at the expense of utility and social value
Pursuit of Pleasure & Worship of the Senses (Hedonism) Evocative Use of the language of senses Excessive attention to the self
Typical representative: dandy see picture
Anti-Natural: belief in the ornate, extreme artifice, performance, and exotic
Walter Pater (theorist) :“to burn always like a hard gemlike flame”, filling each passing moment with intense experience, feeling all kinds of sensations
“Art for art’s sake” in Wilde
“All art is quite useless” (Preface to DG) Rejection of Victorian didacticism and realism Wrote only to please himself
Moral imperative Soul can be cured only by the senses only by
“Art as the cult of beauty” The artist: an alien in materialistic world Superior being social outcast
Art for Art’s sake
This was one of the reactions against the materialism and commercialism of the Victorian industrial era, as well as a reaction against the Victorian convention of art for morality’s sake, or art for money’s sake.
Wilde’s dandy
Aristocrat (vs. Bohemién) Pursuit of pleasure Indulgence in
the beautiful (language, clothes, food, boys…) Elegance: symbol of spiritual superiority Uses wit to shock (and criticize) Individualist: absolute freedom
Quotes by Oscar Wilde 1. I have nothing to declare except my genius. (Oscar Wilde)2. Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can
cure the sense but the soul. (Harry from The Picture of Dorian Gray)
3. I have put my talent into my works. I have put my genius into my life. (OW)
4. The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible. What the second duty is no one has yet discovered. (OW)
5. Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know. (H)
6. A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal. (OW)
7. The only duty we owe to history is to rewrite it. (OW)8. To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance. (OW)9. Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are
curious; both are disappointed. (H)10. My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the
other of us has to go. (OW)11. Modern morality consists in accepting the standards of the age. I
consider that for any man of culture to accept the standards of his age is a form of the grossest immorality. (H)