“The Cult of Beauty”: ‘The Aesthetic Movement 1860-1900’
This exhibition was in its final week when I caught it, and was consequently thronged with tourists and the generally curious. Aestheticism, or ‘Art for art’s sake’, was in part a reaction against the moralising and doctrinaire nature of much of early Victorian art – though the idea of individual creative ‘genius’ was born earlier in the Romantic movement. Although initially somewhat elitist in nature, with the opening of the Grovesnor Gallery, in 1877, the artists were able to exhibit for a large section of the public, and increasingly to influence design styles in furniture, interiors and fashion. It was only in the 1890s, when the ‘aesthete’, epitomised by Oscar Wilde, became an increasing object of satire, that the term gained its more negative connotations. Yet even to the end the leaders of the movement continued to produce grand and sumptious works of art that have not dated.
Origins and initial success
The most well-known of its founders include Edward Burne-Jones, Whistler, Frederick Leighton, Rossetti and Aubrey Beardsley. They had in common a highly sensualised style of painting, whose themes – principally, classicism and exoticism, or orientalism – were subjected to the overall objective of creating a spectacle that was pleasing to the eye. Leighton’s 1865-6 painting, ‘The Syracusan Bride leading Wild Beasts in Procession to the Temple of Diana’ is typical, transplanting an Asian ceremony, its protagonists’ dark arab features at odds with its Greek setting. Leighton’s 1885 sculpture ‘The Sluggard’ portrays an Olympian figure in aesthetically pleasing repose; the title conveys the sensory enjoyment, and the knowing self-awareness that the movement sought to promote. Edward Burne-Jones’ ‘The Peacock’, a lacquered painting, utilises one of Aestheticism’s most prolific motifs, the symbolism of which need not be elaborated on. It is, for example, the title of one of Rossetti’s paintings of his muse Elizabeth Sidel; ‘Pavone’ (1858-9) is Italian for ‘peacock.’ Medieval and Arthurian scenes were also common, evoking an age of bygone chivalry. Slightly anomalous stylistically is Whistler’s ‘Nocturnes’ painting series, a darker, sketchier set of portrayals of the London cityscape. Many contemporary critics were unimpressed with his unconventional style, with Ruskin accusing him in 1877, on the exhibit’s opening, of ‘charging two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face.’
Whistler, though, went on to produce more crowd-pleasing pieces – besides his numerous etchings, his 1881 exhibition for the Fine Arts Society – incorporating collections ‘Thames’, ‘Venice’ and ‘Amsterdam’ – contained a number of portraits of Venetian subjects in exquisite detail. Furthermore, his attempts to arrange the works in colour schemes of red and yellow took the movement’s commitment to visual, as opposed to thematic, impact, to a new level. It predates modern artists like Rothko, to whom colour (or its absence, in his graduated series of ‘black’ canvases) was essentially the sum total of his work. The aforementioned exhibition in 1877, in Grovesnor Gallery, marked Aestheticism’s entry into mainstream culture and consciousness. Previously it had been the preserve of a wealthy elite, with slightly incestuous artistic connections (all three pre-Raphaelites at one time or other owned the same set of ‘moon-backed’ dining chairs). The new forum allowed its works and ideas to reach a widespread audience, whose impact is indicated by the publication, in 1882, of Walter Hamilton’s ‘The Aesthetic Movement in England.’ A year later in 1883 William Morris wrote, in ‘Hopes and Fears for Art’, ‘Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful,’ thus linking an initially ‘high art’ genre into a wider movement promoting artisan craftsmanship, which Morris felt underpinned Britain’s cultural and economic future.
Commercialisation and the sale of an ideal?
Aestheticism in interior design meant many things. Japanese and flower motifs on wallpaper, tea sets and furniture abounded; a workshop founded in South Kensington was dedicated to producing pottery with lacquer portraits, while the same device adorned many desks and chests. By the 1890s Morris had even founded a company producing highly elaborate manuscript books, the Kelmscott Press. Perhaps because of its ubiquity, aestheticism became increasingly a target of ridicule. Gilbert and Sullivan’s 1882 ‘Patience, an Aesthetic Opera,’ starred the ‘fleshly poet’ Reginald Bunthorne who some felt epitomised the self-absorbed excesses of those who followed an ‘aesthetic’ philosophy or lifestyle. While Oscar Wilde’s actions as self-appointed spokesman for the movement improved its profile initially, the scandal which unfolded in 1892 discredited it in many eyes. Aubrey Beardsley’s 1894 ‘The Climax’, an illustration for ‘Salome’, by Wilde, was perhaps an artistic leap too far. However, despite accusations of self-importance, what this exhibition conveys very well is the sense of humour or subversion that underpinned the aesthetic movement. Vases adorned with wriggling tadpoles, a fan painted, not with the traditional butterflies, but with bats against a dark night sky. Best of all, a fan with the ever-present peacock feathers, that acted as an autograph book for the owner – various signatures are scribbled all over it.
The movement tailed off in the late 1890s into that of the ‘New Sculpture’, led by Alfred Gilbert, but the aging masters continued to produce pieces of enduring quality. Lord Leighton’s 1892 ‘The Garden of the Hesperides’ is typical, a portrayal of classical decadence, with figures in Grecian-style robes reclining – on each other – under a leafy canopy. While the idea of worshipping beauty purely for its own sake is one whose ethical or philosophical principles can, and have been, frequently attacked, its message is still relevant today. Morris combined his aesthetic ideals with socialist ones; perhaps we all need a little beauty to brighten our lives. Why else would the BBC devote 24-hour coverage to the spectacle of Kate Middleton lifting a shovel?
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