aestheticism
Americannoun
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the acceptance of artistic beauty and taste as a fundamental standard, ethical and other standards being secondary.
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an exaggerated devotion to art, music, or poetry, with indifference to practical matters.
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a late Victorian movement in British and American art characterized by a dedicatedly eclectic search for beauty and by an interest in old English, Japanese, and classical art.
noun
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the doctrine that aesthetic principles are of supreme importance and that works of art should be judged accordingly
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sensitivity to beauty, esp in art, music, literature, etc
Etymology
Origin of aestheticism
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Some writers and artists who initially championed boundary-pushing aestheticism later found a spiritual home in the Catholic Church.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 3, 2026
The standoff between Blanche’s impractical aestheticism and Stanley’s ruthless pragmatism is the heart of this quintessentially American drama.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 4, 2024
It all looks effortless because the power is married to aestheticism, and there isn't an extra note in the composition.
From BBC ● May 23, 2023
Pater may have been a creature of 19th-century spiritualism and aestheticism, his sensibility as alien to the Renaissance as to our own era of metrics and algorithms.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 28, 2019
A new form of aestheticism has lately appeared which pretends to combine morality and culture.
From Christianity and Ethics A Handbook of Christian Ethics by Archibald B. C. Alexander
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