Art Quiz: The Answer is Aestheticism

“Art for art’s sake” or more properly “l’art pour l’art” in French is a somewhat puzzling concept for me. In January 2021, I wrote a post that expressed my personal interpretation of “art for art’s sake“, and was taken to task by a fellow blogger for not really understanding what the movement was all about.

So, today, rather than attempt any explanation of my own, I’ll direct you to The Art Story and share their short summary of “art for art’s sake”.

Taken from the French, the term “l’art pour l’art,” expresses the idea that art has an inherent value independent of its subject-matter, or of any social, political, or ethical significance. By contrast, art should be judged purely on its own terms: according to whether or not it is beautiful, capable of inducing ecstasy or revery in the viewer through its formal qualities (its use of line, color, pattern, and so on). The concept became a rallying cry across nineteenth-century Britain and France, partly as a reaction against the stifling moralism of much academic art and wider society, with the writer Oscar Wilde perhaps its most famous champion. Although the phrase has been little used since the early twentieth century, its legacy lived on in many twentieth-century ideas concerning the autonomy of art, notably in various strains of formalism.

Oscar Wilde — mentioned above — once said that “All art is quite useless”, and I find myself very much in disagreement here, although I can see his point if I look hard enough.

Part of the thinking behind “art for art’s sake” centers around that idea of “usefulness”, with proponents of “art for art’s sake” declaring that useful things simply can’t be considered art.

Consider these words from French poet and literary critic Theophile Gautier:

Nothing is really beautiful unless it is useless; everything useful is ugly, for it expresses a need, and the needs of man are ignoble and disgusting, like his poor, weak nature. The most useful place in a house is the lavatory.

My question is why we’re accepting art evaluation from a poet, but that’s just me, and I really don’t understand “art for art’s sake”. To me, personally, it means making art simply for the pleasure of making art, but don’t listen to me, please.

Perhaps we can gain a better understanding if we turn toward the larger concept of aestheticism. Here, again, I’m calling upon the experts.

Aestheticism, late 19th-century European arts movement which centered on the doctrine that art exists for the sake of its beauty alone, and that it need serve no political, didactic, or other purpose.

The movement began in reaction to prevailing utilitarian social philosophies and to what was perceived as the ugliness and philistinism of the industrial age. Its philosophical foundations were laid in the 18th century by Immanuel Kant, who postulated the autonomy of aesthetic standards, setting them apart from considerations of morality, utility, or pleasure. This idea was amplified by J.W. von Goethe, J.L. Tieck, and others in Germany and by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Thomas Carlyle in England. It was popularized in France by Madame de Staël, Théophile Gautier, and the philosopher Victor Cousin, who coined the phrase l’art pour l’art (“art for art’s sake”) in 1818.

In all honesty, the more I read about “art for art’s sake” and the aesthetic art movement, the less I understand what it was all about. In searching for good illustrations of aestheticism, I found this painting, described as one that “most closely fits the ideals of the Aesthetic movement.”

The Golden Stairs

Artist: Edward Burne-Jones – 1880

Created for the Grosvenor Gallery’s exhibition in 1880, The Golden Stairs is the Burne-Jones painting that most closely fits the ideals of the Aesthetic movement. Although many of the artist’s paintings do include narrative content and moral messages, in The Golden Stairs he eschews this to create a composition entirely based on aesthetics. Each of the women walking down the elegant sweep of the golden stairs is wearing a similarly classicized gown, and each is proportioned to be tall and slim, echoing the shape of the painting itself. The figures’ dresses are subtly different, providing decorative details that keep the viewer’s eye interested but not overwhelmed. Each also carries a different musical instrument as they rhythmically descend stairs that have been described as a visual reference to musical scales. Undoubtedly a nod to Walter Pater’s famous assertion that “all the arts aspire to the condition of music,” the original title of the painting was Music on the Stairs.

Burne-Jones was a key figure who helped to bridge the gap between Pre-Raphaelitism and Aestheticism, creating works that fall under the rubrics of both movements. In this painting, although the faces and clothes of his figures are very similar to some of his earlier works and bear a resemblance to many of the Pre-Raphaelite women painted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the composition points more to the values of the Aesthetic movement. Unlike Pre-Raphaelite paintings, The Golden Stairs has no literary source. The subtle and harmonious color palette, as well as the absence of complex narrative or moral content, are also indicative of Aestheticism. Furthermore, the long, thin painting, measuring 9 x 4 feet, recalls the shape of a decorative wall panel rather than a traditional narrative canvas.

I also found Christopher Dresser’s “Teapot” — which made me exclaim at once, “Oh, but a teapot is useful!” Well, yes, ordinarily so. But not this teapot.

It’s definitely interesting, but I guess it serves no real purpose. I doubt that this teapot would be too useful.

For me, I do find the whole idea of art being without purpose quite troubling. I want to find purpose in art, even if that purpose is nothing more than creative expression. I want to enjoy art, which seems to be an underlying concept of art for art’s sake, and in the end, maybe it comes down to a question of “need” VS “want”.  Does this “thing” — whatever it is — fulfill a need? Or is merely something desirable? I can see a distinction there, but I can also see where form, function, and utility can be beautiful, too.

I’ll never really understand or accept the precise art history definitions of “art for art’s sake”, and that’s all right. I’ll just go right on creating whatever art I want, just for the sake of creating it. And I’ll go right on calling it art, whether it is or it isn’t.

 

Advertisement