Introduction: Reflections on the Relationship Between Art and Life in Aestheticism Kelly Comfort

Introduction: Reflections on the Relationship between Art and Life in Aestheticism Kelly Comfort What is behind this disgust at seeing art mixed up with life? Could it be disgust for the human sphere as such, for reality, for life? Or is it rather the opposite: respect for life and unwillingness to confuse it with art, so inferior a thing is art? But what do we mean calling art an inferior function— divine art, glory of civilization, fine fleur of culture, and so forth? As we were saying, these questions are impertinent; let us dismiss them. —José Ortega y Gasset, The Dehumanization of Art The questions that underpin this study are the same ones that José Ortega y Gasset, in his 1925 essay The Dehumanization of Art (La deshumanización del arte), deems impertinent and dismisses. The contributors to this volume strive to answer the queries Ortega y Gasset posed, but refrained from exploring: “What is behind this disgust at seeing art mixed up with life? Could it be disgust for the human sphere as such, for reality, for life? Or is it rather the opposite: respect for life and unwillingness to confuse it with art, so inferior a thing is art?” (29). The subject of how art and literature both determine and are determined by the human is at the forefront of aestheticism, although it is rarely examined in these terms. To the contrary, aestheticism is commonly seen as an attempt to separate art from life (i.e. the social, economic, scientific, pragmatic, political, national, etc.), as many authors, artists, aesthetes, and dandies have consciously elevated art to a position of supreme importance and to an autonomous sphere of its own. Yet the question as to whether art for art’s sake actually seeks to de-humanize or re-humanize art, the artist, and the artistic receptor has not received comprehensive critical attention,1 despite the coexistence of life-evading and life-sustaining attitudes present in the major literary, artistic, and philo- sophical works of aestheticism. Art and Life in Aestheticism: De-Humanizing and Re-Humanizing Art, the Artist, and the Artistic Receptor addresses the tenuous 1 K. Comfort (ed.), Art and Life in Aestheticism © Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2008 2 Introduction and changing relationship between the aesthetic and the human in aestheticism over the last two centuries—from its origins in the early nineteenth century with figures such as Gautier and Baudelaire through to the “new aestheticism” of today2—in an effort to ascertain the position of art for art’s sake regarding the role or place of the human. I shall first clarify the titular terms that define this study so as to: establish what is meant by aestheticism throughout the volume; explain why an examination of aestheticism as de-humanizing or re-humanizing should involve a consideration of art, the artist, and the artistic receptor; and point out the multiple ways of approaching the concepts of de-humanization and re-humanization—both by tracing some of the key ideas on the subject from practitioners and theorists of aestheticism over the past two centuries and by outlining the varying viewpoints expressed throughout this volume. Aestheticism—the term is linked to art for art’s sake and its French equiv- alent l’art pour l’art; associated with the idea of pure art; related to the notion of autonomous art. To make sense of these multiple definitions it is helpful to follow the approach suggested by R.V. Johnson, who treats aestheticism in three different applications: (1) “as a view of art,” which he calls art for art’s sake; (2) “as a practical tendency in literature and the arts (and in literary and art criticism)” in which the artist does not feel “called upon to speak either for or to his age at all”; and (3) “as a view of life,” which he terms “contemplative aestheticism—the idea of treating experience, ‘in the spirit of art’, as material for aesthetic enjoyment” (12). Beginning with the first classification of art for art’s sake as a view of art, it is important to note that the most defining characteristic is the tendency to attach an unusually high value to the form of the artwork as opposed to its subject matter. Style is what matters; it alone determines the quality of a work of art. The particular stylistic proclivities that came to be recognized as distinctly aestheticist include the use of sketches (instead of drawings), sug- gestion (rather than statement), sensual imagery, symbol, synesthesia, musi- cality, mandarin prose, aphorisms, fragments, non-linear narratives, catalogs, lists, etc. Moreover, the downplaying of the work’s content led authors and artists to distance their subject matter from “real” and “everyday” life, and instead to conjure distant and exotic realms, to fashion fantastic and unreal spaces, and to take on forbidden and taboo themes. The second categorization of aestheticism as the tendency toward artistic autonomy is best characterized by the call for complete artistic freedom—freedom from morality, from didacticism, from convention, and, as the previous paragraph suggests, from the responsibility of realistically representing reality. As Robert C. Olson accurately explains, aestheticism served as an alternative “to prevailing utilitarianism and moralism,” since the aestheticist artist was protesting “against literature’s being used to teach lessons, against art as political, religious, or social propaganda” (60). In contrast to the commonly accepted and long-standing view that literature (or any other art form) Kelly Comfort 3 is meant both to instruct and to hold a mirror up to reality, aestheticism embraces the idea that literature should lack all extraliterary purposes—be they moral or social, since its sole objectives are to be beautiful and to give pleasure. Art for art’s sake consciously avoids the alternative of art for some other sake. Nevertheless, the defense of the aesthetic as an autonomous sphere without relations or obligations to the domains of utility, morality, politics, religion, etc., does not necessarily preclude the possibility that aestheticist works of art and literature critique the societal status quo and undermine its norms of gender, sexuality, or class, to name only its most salient targets. Many recent studies examine the way in which aestheticist texts: contribute to “the dissemination of dissident views” (Denisoff 2); have the “power to interrupt ideologies of sexual normativity” (Ohi xi); offer “potentially resistive implications in the arena of sexual politics (Felski 102); operate “as a central mode of engaging in and interpreting philosophy, history, and politics” (Loesberg 4); cause “moral, theological, and sexual shock” (Shrimpton 6). As this volume aims to demonstrate, aestheticism’s ability to engage with, contribute to, interrupt, resist, interpret, and shock warrants further, comprehensive attention, especially in relation to its simultaneous call for autonomy and independence. Finally, by examining aestheticism of the third kind, as a view of life instead of a view of art, we learn much about the artist’s tenuous relationship with society. What Johnson calls “contemplative aestheticism”—the act of treating life in the spirit of art—is a position adopted by many nineteenth-century aesthetes and dandies (and then revisited in a variety of ways by supporters of twentieth-century movements such as formalism, camp, and deconstruction). What emerges in art as the self-contained and self-sufficient artwork manifests itself in life in the figure of the solipsistic aesthete or dandy who creates himself in a similarly conceived form of artistic expression and chooses an equally unique and independent existence. Dandies and aesthetes elevated art “to a position of supreme—or even exclusive— importance in the conduct of life” and willingly subsumed all aspects of life into the sole criterion of artistic beauty and pleasure ( Johnson 12). By consecrating life to the cultivation of art, beauty, and taste above all else, the aesthete’s slogan is not so much “art for art’s sake” as it is “life for art’s sake” or “life for the sake of beauty.” Because those who adopted aestheticism as a view of life insisted on placing the aesthetic at the forefront of life, art was promoted as a quasi-religion, as an alternative to the materialist ethic of industrial–capitalist society that undermined the place of art and the artist in the changing marketplace.3 Whereas I previously outlined the dominant artistic “styles” common in aestheticism, it is here worth mentioning the prevailing life “styles” common to the aesthete: elitism (and a critique of bourgeois culture and philistinism); orientalism (and a distaste for the common and ordinary); and, quite often, homosexuality (and a rejection of mainstream “tastes” and orientations). 4 Introduction Art, the artist, and the artistic receptor—these terms reflect three ways of approaching an analysis of aestheticism. The term art is used in its most expansive definition, as an all-encompassing word for any object of aesthetic production—from painting to poetry; from music to sculpture; from prose to interior design. In this regard, contributors to this volume refer to art in the same way that theorists and practitioners of art for art’s sake were apt to do, since the term is not limited to one particular artistic medium. By artist we refer to the person who gives the art object its particular qualities and characteristics. The artist is the creator or producer of art. Yet in aestheticism the term artist needs to be expanded to include those aesthetes and dandies who turn their lives into works of art as well as those artistic or impressionistic critics4 whose appreciation of art often led to the creation of new art.

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