Aesthetic movement

British art movement, which developed out of a combination of neo-gothic elements and the Queen Anne Revival. Designers of the Aesthetic Movement were fascinated by Japanese woodcuts and oriental art.This newly evoked interest in Japanese art and in its unusual means of perspective is called Japonisme. Designers of the Aesthetic Movement were for example the architect E.W. Godwin, Christopher Dresser and James Abbot McNeill Whistler. One well-known example for the design of this period is the Peacock Room by Whistler, which he made for F.R. Leyland's flat in London in 1876/77. Today it is shown in the Freer Gallery in Washington. The most prominent figures connected with the Aesthetic movement in Britain are Oscar Wilde and the artist Aubrey Beardsley. During his short career Aubrey Beardsley was heavily criticised by the press. „Beardsley`s grotesque figues revealed the late-Victorians` hypocrisy. Reviewers carped about these deformations of the body, often ascribing them to Beardsley`s flirtation with the Japanese who were culturally inferior and therefore impervious to change. Japanese woodbloc prints offended the British for the same reasons, formal structure and treatment of the subject matter” (Zatlin, 22). Especially his illustrations for Oscar Wilde's play Salomé were seen as too sexual and offensive, therefore some of his initial illustrations had to be replaced.

Sources

Fiell, Carlotte und Peter. Design Handbook: Konzepte ,Materialien, Stile. Köln: Taschen, 2006.
Zatlin, Linda Gertner. Beardsley, Japonisme and the perversion of the Victorian ideal. Cambridge: CUP, 1997.