Aesthetic Movement

唯美主義運動 / 1870s–1880s / Style / Furniture and Interiors

A British and American movement of the 1870s and 1880s that ran through painting, furniture, textiles and architecture alike. Following art for art's sake, it put beauty and the independent value of art above didactic purpose, narrative content or weighty subject matter. Ornament therefore says nothing, and every decision is settled on the harmony of the surface.

Aesthetic Movement — James McNeill Whistler, The Peacock Room (Harmony in Blue and Gold), 1876–77, Freer Gallery of Art — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 · © Votpuske — James McNeill Whistler, The Peacock Room (Harmony in Blue and Gold), 1876–77, Freer Gallery of Art — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · © Votpuske

Aesthetic Movement — Herter Brothers, cabinet, c. 1872, Brooklyn Museum — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 — Herter Brothers, cabinet, c. 1872, Brooklyn Museum — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 · CC0

Aesthetic Movement — Designed by Bruce James Talbert, made by Gillow & Co., drawing-room cabinet, 1871–1872, Art Institute of Chicago — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 — Designed by Bruce James Talbert, made by Gillow & Co., drawing-room cabinet, 1871–1872, Art Institute of Chicago — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 · CC0

At a glance

Visual cues

Sunflowers and lilies recurring in the same form on ceramics, on textiles and in the room itself
A palette pulled toward olive green and yellow, with dark red and cream set against black grounds
Japanese motifs flattened into repeats: circular bamboo, stylised rosettes and trailing leaves over a lozenge patterned ground
Blue and white Chinese porcelain arranged in the room, the vessels themselves treated as part of the decoration

Best used for

Designing ornament that is not meant to signify, by cutting motifs loose from narrative and flattening them into repeats
Tying a whole layout to one colour family, taking a point between green and yellow as the anchor and pulling everything else toward it

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Dictionary entry

Type: Treat lettering as one more ornament and keep it from asserting meaning. Use a light face and repeat it on the same interval as the pattern.
Composition: Cover wall, cloth and vessel with one pattern system so that figure and ground stop separating. Keep the repeat unit small.
Material: A base between olive green and yellow, with dark red, cream and black grounds. Sunflowers, lilies and stylised plants laid down flat, with no modelling.
Caution: Pasting on sunflowers and lilies as signs drops the actual claim, that ornament outranks subject, and leaves ordinary Victorian patterning.
Further study: how the repeat unit meshes with the ground grid in British furnishing textiles of around 1880 / what Gilbert and Sullivan's 1881 comic opera Patience was laughing at in the movement / how it was seen at the time, from du Maurier's cartoons in Punch between 1873 and 1881

Related entries

Japonisme (ジャポニスム)Shared effects: Luxury / Calm.Compare Aesthetic Movement and Japonisme
Victorian Ornament (ヴィクトリアン装飾)Shared effects: Luxury.Compare Aesthetic Movement and Victorian Ornament

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