aesthetic distance

American  

noun

1. a degree of detachment from or nonidentification with the characters or circumstances of a work of art, permitting the formation of judgments based on aesthetic rather than extra-aesthetic criteria.

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Etymology

Origin of aesthetic distance

First recorded in 1935–40

Example Sentences

This is "concerned" photography, with a twist; for though no living photographer is more obsessed with his subject than Beard, he works out the obsession at a calculated aesthetic distance.

From Time Magazine Archive

But Johnson of Cheshire lacked the aesthetic distance required of sustained irony and had a grander purpose in mind.

From The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany Parts 2, 3 and 4 by Novak, Maximillian E.