“Art for arts sake.”
“Merging of art into life.”
A n Aesthete is a person who has or affects to have a special appreciation of art and beauty. Welcome to the evolution of the Aesthete, the most influential movement you’ve never heard of.
Oscar Wilde, 1854–1900. “It is through art, and only art, that we can realize our perfection.”
To understand what an Aesthete is and what they stand for it’s first important to have background on the time period and region from which they emerged. The idea of the Aesthete and aestheticism blossomed in the mid-1800’s throughout England (particularly London) in the wake of the industrial revolution. In this time we observed a shift from local, unique craftsmanship toward special-purpose machinery, factories, and mass production. With these changes so too did the tastes of the average person in England.
David Carrier. Historian and Author. “Everyday life seemed to be increasingly defined by the expanding field of entertainment and commercial distractions…” (sound familiar?) “…our susceptibility to colors, sounds, shapes and scents were being used to delineate the parameters of our desires and tastes, so that they could be packaged and sold back to us. The complex network of our senses and emotions were being fragmented.”
Many things (from art to architecture to attire) were increasingly being seen as materialist pieces, devoid of any true emotional attachment and/or sentiment. There was a certain faction of the population who did not align with these societal shifts, they believed in fully immersing themselves in the feelings and emotions attached to everyday experiences of life.
“I think a poor life is lived by any one who doesn’t regularly take time out to stand still and gaze, or to sit and listen, or touch, or smell, or brood, without any further end in mind, simply for the satisfaction gotten from that which is gazed at, listened to, touched, smelled, or brooded upon.” Clement Greenberg, an American essayist, art critic and Aesthete.
Although Aesthete’s are typically art critics, or critics of the ‘times’, the definition goes far beyond that; to them it is a way of life.
We’ll explore the lives of three of the most influential Aesthete’s — John Ruskin (1819–1900), Walter Pater (1839–1894), and Adrian Stokes (1902–1972). The choice to explore these three mens’ lives is not to recap their accomplishments but rather to further understand what an Aesthete is and how they got to be that way.
John Ruskin came from a wealthy yet strict background. As a child he was allowed no access to any children’s toys, as his parents did not want to over indulge him. Ruskin recalls as a very young child his toils with entertainment. “I soon attained serene and secure methods of life and motion; and could pass my days contentedly in tracing the squares and comparing the colors of my carpet; — examining the knots in the wood of the floor, or counting the bricks in the opposite house … my attention to the particulars in these were soon very accurate.” ¹ Is it then a surprise or a foreshadow that Ruskin, a man with an extremely keen eye towards minor details, went on to become one of the most respected critics of art of his time — the face of the Aesthete movement (along with Oscar Wilde). His fascination with details and observing continued throughout youth into adulthood — the peace he found observing details in nature was his muse. Much of his childhood was spent gazing into the ocean, simply taking it in, I believe this was the stem of his life’s views. “The grazing and nesting, — the spiritual power of the air, the rocks, the waters, — to be in the midst of it, and rejoice and wonder at it…this was the essential love of nature in me.” ¹ Below is one of Ruskin’s pieces, where he seamlessly integrates a city into a nature landscape. Most of the detail in the piece goes into the natural landscape, a testament to Ruskin’s fascination with observing nature.
Walter Pater also originated from a somewhat wealthy background in England. He was born twenty years after Ruskin and died six years before him, yet his influence in the aestheticism movement was just as impactful. Pater too was fascinated with the pleasures and simplicity of childhood — particularly the source of such emotions. He remembers the details of his childhood, how a child can view objects and ideas with delight and that later in life those same things may become dull and routine. A child has a way of emotional attachment, separating excitement from fiscal or societal value; a child may be delighted by something as small as playing with a candle flame and un-entertained by something as valuable as ownership of a diamond. The Aesthete’s resonate with this thought process throughout their lives. Pater explains, “For it is false to suppose that a child’s sense of beauty is dependent on any choiceness of special fineness, in the objects which present themselves to it, though this indeed comes to be the rule with most of us later in life; earlier, in some degree, we see inwardly.” ² Pater was a scholar, a historian and later in life an esteemed critic. In his early adult years he pursued a life in the church, but he was consumed by his interest in classical studies and ultimately that became his passion from which he evolved into an Aesthete. By studying and writing historically about the likes of Michelangelo and Leonardo De Vinci, Mr. Pater was soon a very respected classical art historian. Walter resonates with the beauty of everyday life and steers clear of assigning value unto something simply because it is deemed valuable — “All the acts and accidents of daily life borrowed sacred colour and significance; the very colours of things became themselves weighty with meanings like the sacred stuff of Moses’ tabernacle, full of penitence or peace.” ²
Of the three Aesthete’s we are exploring Adrian Stokes is perhaps the most influenced by his childhood years. He states “in the nursery is where to find the themes of human nature; the rest is ‘working-out’, though it be also real music.” ³ In this quote we see that like other Aesthete’s Adrian too has a special affinity to a child’s way of viewing the world — that the nature of a human being can be seen through the way they see the world as a child; and that the rest of life and ‘growing up’ is akin to working out (requiring effort for growth), though this effort can still produce real results (“real music”). He recounts in great detail his years as a young man growing up next to a city park in England. It is in this park that Stokes realized his attention to detail in observation, and the joy he gained from such acute attentiveness. In reminiscing in his years at the park Stokes enlightens us in the foundation of his believes… “I used to single out the cars in the processional traffic on the road round the park, and count them.” (Like Ruskin) … “Seeing the fountains turned on was a fine site. The spouts grew from a trickle to an inch, to a foot, to a yard, finally reaching a great height, sustained there by an eager, pumping pulse: at the summit, rainbow colours could be discerned; a thin elegant summit sometimes torn by wind but formed again immediately.” ³
A person who has a refined, deep sensitivity to the beauty of art or nature — an Aesthete truly sees the world through a different lens. Although the height of the Aesthete movement is in the rear view mirror I believe we can gain a lot of compassion and joy through their teachings. To take time out of ones’ day to simply observe and immerse themselves in their surroundings, this is a fantastic and undervalued way to increase our appreciation of the things we do have, and to not get stressed or jealous of the things we don’t have.
“An Aesthete is someone deeply engaged with painting and sculpture (or any form of artistic expression) who see the world in terms usually associated with viewing art, giving special value to the visual world for its own sake; and who brings this way of thinking to experience outside of art. Aesthetes divide their world, making a distinction between everyday practical ways of seeing and those privileged moments associated with aesthetic experience. Most people do not, and so this division seems less to reveal how the world is than to constitute a relatively unusual way in which things may be seen.” ⁴
Index
¹ 1819–1900, Ruskin John. Praeterita. Hardpress Ltd, 2013.
² 1903, Pater, Walter, and Thomas Bird Mosher. The Child in the House; an Imaginary Portrait.
³ Stokes, Adrian. Inside out, an Essay in the Psychology and Aesthetic Appeal of Space. Faber and Faber Limited, 1947.
⁴ Commentary by David Carrier. Ruskin, John, et al. England and Its Aesthetes: Biography and Taste. Gordon & Breach, 1997.
